


Fractured

by thisonegoes



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Medical, But for real Zayn is in a lot of pain, Car Accidents, Dream Sex, M/M, Nurse Harry, Nurses & Nursing, Pain, Patient Zayn, Surgery, and pain is difficult to get through
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-25
Updated: 2015-05-25
Packaged: 2018-03-31 19:57:50
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 33,022
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3990802
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thisonegoes/pseuds/thisonegoes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Can you tell me your name?”</p><p>A nurse's penlight flashes in front of Zayn's eyes, first his right, then his left. A quick back and forth. To test him. To see if he’s still here. He blinks it away.</p><p> </p><p>  <i>It’s too bright, stop it, I’m here, am I dying?</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Fractured

**Author's Note:**

> I researched as much as I could, and asked my nurse friend about a million questions. So I hope this is alright, on the medical side of things.
> 
> Thanks to Jasmine, Izzy, and Trisha for reading this and encouraging me along the way. I'm going to get you all gift cards to your favorite restaurants. xx

 

The sensation of true weightlessness isn’t a pleasant one. It’s not like bungee jumping, or the feeling after you crest over a roller coaster, when you choose the fall. It’s not even simple, like laughing in a moon bounce or bouncing higher on a trampoline. It’s not your stomach jumping to your throat in excitement, or your hands in the air to try to touch the sky.

Actual, physical weightlessness isn’t fun.

_This is wrong._

That’s Zayn’s first thought, as his body flies through the air. It’s the very first thing that comes to him, as he floats.

The second thought he has, as he propels forward, is simple.

_It doesn’t even hurt._

They say when faced with true trauma, the body doesn’t register it. Pain receptors and synapses firing, from your brain to your extremities, to say _this hurts because you need to pay attention, fix the wound, keep foreign bodies out,_ aren’t really necessary when everything bursts or fractures at once. When it’s bigger than a paper cut, your body knows the pain isn’t needed. It’s why people who lose their arms to shark attacks don’t even notice until they hear the screaming from the beach or see the blood floating around them in the water.

So that’s where Zayn’s brain goes, as he looks up and sees the sky, belatedly trying to reach for it.

_This is wrong. It doesn’t even hurt._

The last thought he has, before his skull slams into the concrete, is also simple. It’s accompanied by a pair of green eyes and floppy hair, ringed fingers and tight jeans. It’s laced up with the smile of a stranger, the distraction from the other side of the street.

It all goes black, as it comes to Zayn.

_Should’ve looked both ways._

 

***

 

Zayn doesn’t cry as he comes to. He doesn’t even question it, the odd angle of his body there on the ground, the blood in his mouth. He realizes he’s probably in shock, as he’s poked and prodded by a stranger there on the street corner. _It’s a funny thing, to be in shock but also to be aware of the fact that you’re in shock. Weird. Am I talking to myself? Am I saying this out loud?_

“Hey,” a voice coos to his right. “Stay awake, it’s okay.”

_Guess I’m not saying anything, then. Just in my own head. It’s just me in here._

“Stay with me, bud. Come on, you’re right here. I’m here.”

Zayn feels someone squeezing his hand. It’s a firm grip, the sky hazy above him, a voice whispering to him to stay awake. _I’m awake, I’m right here, my eyes are open. I can see the sky. It’s bright._

Someone screams into a phone somewhere, ready to burst. A car alarm won’t stop squawking, a group of people murmuring. Zayn has great ears, he’s always said so; it’s why he does what he does. He hears things. He shapes sound before anyone else knows it’s there. A whistle in the distance. A sharp, labored breath near his ear. The person holding his hand squeezes harder, applies pressure over and over, like a pulse.

_Where are we? Shouldn’t it hurt by now?_

“It’s okay,” the voice comes closer. “You’re okay. You’re right here.”

_I know I’m here. Where are you?_

“Hear that?” the man says in a rush, like it’s a relief, a siren blasting. Closer. Closer. “The ambulance is here. We’re going to fix you right up.”

Zayn tries to squeeze the man’s hand in return, to use his body to say what he can’t, when he realizes it. He can’t squeeze. He can’t feel his other hand either, his left one with his tattoos and the ring his aunt gave him. He can’t feel his feet. All of a sudden, and out of nowhere, Zayn cries. One long wail, as the adrenaline surges, the siren so close it hurts his eardrums.

_Why can’t I feel anything? Why doesn’t it hurt?_

“Shhh,” the voice tries again, lips against Zayn’s right ear. “It’s okay.”

“Mmm,” Zayn tries to speak, the blood between his teeth making it hard, the sky and sun suddenly too big and bright above him, his face screwed up in anguish. “M – my.”

“I got you,” the stranger assures him. “I got you.”

After that, it goes black again.

 

***

 

Zayn blinks a few times in the ambulance, the light above him even brighter than the sun from before. The oxygen mask over his face fogs as his breath quickens, the harder his heart beats in his chest. The brace around his neck forces his eyes up. He can’t see his body. _Fuck, is it even there? Am I just a head and face now?_

He hears beeps and levels, a tire screeching, scissors along his chest cutting open his shirt. They’re talking about him like he’s not there, like he’s some science experiment, or a fetal pig to dissect in freshman biology. _I cut open a pig once. My lab partner had the liver, and I had the kidneys, and our teacher had everyone come over to look at ours because the medullas were so distinct. I got an A. I’m really smart._

Zayn cries again, loudly, his kidneys and medulla suddenly right there in front of his eyes, cut open on a table, to show freshman how to operate on them. _Fuck, I’m dying. This is how I go. A car hits me and that’s it._

“You’re okay,” the same voice comes back strong, to his ear. “Shhh.”

“Wh— ” Zayn tries, the oxygen mask clouding his projection.

_You’re still here. I’m sorry I can’t say anything. I swear I can scream when I want to. I’m quiet, but I can be loud. I’m loud, you’ll see. I can sing. I can yell. Why can’t I do it? Why doesn’t it hurt?_

“You’re not dying,” he reads Zayn’s mind. “We won’t let you. Right, boys?”

They all agree. They bump fists, Zayn can hear the skin to skin contact, the clicking of a pen, the whirring of a machine. All Zayn can see is the bright light above him. It’s not the one beckoning him to heaven or wherever the fuck we go when it’s the end, but the one in the ambulance. He knows, it’s just halogen bulbs, so he holds onto that.

Blink. The light. Blink. The light.

“It’s bright, I know,” the voice speaks to his conscience again, like he’s inside Zayn’s head. “We’re almost there.”

Zayn tries to nod. His right hand suddenly feels warm once more, enveloped between someone else’s palms. _You’re warm._

After that, it goes black again.

 

***

 

He decides not to open his eyes for a while, as if it’s a conscious decision instead of a hazy, drugged-out one. _It’s bright and I don’t like it._

So Zayn does what he does best, and uses his ears as they wheel him into the hospital.

“Adult male, struck by a vehicle while crossing the street, broken femur, possible broken fibula, possible broken clavicle, contusions to the chest and left arm, possible broken wrist.”

“B-P one-fifty over eighty. Ten milligrams of morphine. Saline drip.”

“Order a CT and chest x-ray.”

“Name?”

“He didn’t say.”

“Are you family, sir?”

“No, but I work here. I saw it happen and was with him.”

“Right, right. Cardio recovery floor, right?”

“Call Mori from ortho and get an O-R ready. I want those scans, see if there’s bleeding in his chest.”

“Can I?”

It’s all hazy, the voices blending together, over each other, twisting like a vine. Zayn can’t tell who is speaking to whom, if he’s supposed to be paying attention. It’s like the sensation right before you fall asleep and suddenly jolt awake, like you’re not right by being on either side of consciousness, like one should be winning over the other, but isn’t. His head starts to hurt. _That’s a good sign, I think._

He blinks as the oxygen mask is removed, his jeans being torn from his skinny legs, a needle tugging at his arm.

Finally, after what feels like years, Zayn sees the face of another human being, instead of a bright light above him.

Green eyes and floppy hair. Illuminated and beautiful, like one of those Renaissance paintings where baby Jesus looks about three and thirty at the same time, a halo, a golden sheen to his skin, a dimple.

“Hey,” the stranger smiles with relief, their eyes locked. “See, you’re right here.”

Zayn blinks.

“Can you tell me your name?”

A penlight flashes in front of his eyes, first his right, then his left. A quick back and forth. To test him. To see if he’s still here. Zayn blinks it away. _It’s too bright, stop it, I’m here, am I dying?_

“What’s your name?”

Zayn tries. His tongue comes up to the back of his teeth and everything. And even when he feels his mouth forming the syllables wrong, like when he was a child and had a lisp, before he went to three speech therapists to correct it, he tries. _I don’t even care if I sound like a fucking idiot, I don’t care. I want to say my name. Can I say it now? Please?_

“Th—” he tries harder.

It comes out as a Th, instead of his Z, the last letter of the alphabet that his mom said made him special. His mom, _my mom, fuck_. He’s going to cry again.

“It’s okay,” the man nods, understanding. “Let’s try this.”

Metal clanking, more beeping, nurses talking about him like he’s not even there, poking his chest, the rough sound of gauze being unraveled.

The man comes back into view, with his halo still on, and holds up Zayn’s wallet and driver’s license.

“Zayn Javadd Malik. That’s you, right?” he gives Zayn a small smile.

_That’s me, I’m me, I’m right here. I’m here. I’m here._

Zayn blinks about a hundred times to send the message, tears clouding his vision, his head aching.

“There you are,” the stranger exhales with relief. “You’re Zayn. Hello, Zayn Malik. I’m Harry.”

He squeezes Zayn’s right hand again, relieved, like Zayn’s his best friend. Like they were on the brink of death and fought their way back together. Like he wasn’t the one who made Zayn step into traffic, into the bustle of city life, but was instead the one to pull him out of it, into a beautiful countryside, to touch the sky.

“Got this as well,” the man, Harry, says with another smile, Zayn’s iPhone in his hand. “Not broken, and not a scratch on it. Life’s funny like that, isn’t it?”

Zayn blinks. The pain from his head starts to travel south, through his neck, like he’s being stabbed there. His diaphragm expands too quickly. It hurts. _Fuck, now it hurts. I can feel it. I can feel everything._

“How about I call your mom, hmm?” Harry leans in closer, blocking out the light entirely. “She’s the first name in your Favorites. Can I call her?”

Zayn blinks a thousand times in a row, tears trickling from the corners of his eyes. _She should be here, I think she should be here, but I’m afraid of her seeing me like this. Shit. Fuck, she’s going to kill me. Or worse, sob for the rest of her life. She shouldn’t see this. She shouldn’t come. Yes, please call her, I need her here, please call her. I’m here. I’m here._

The beeping to his left accelerates, right as his heart does, a surge of adrenaline rushing through him like a Red Bull the night before exams. All the people working on Zayn, keeping him together, righting the wrongs done to him by a two-ton tin can barreling down the street, get closer. _It’s time to go, isn’t it. They’re going to move me, aren’t they._

“You’re going to be okay,” Harry whispers, reading his mind. “We’re going to fix you right up.”

Zayn heaves a breath, exhausted. _I should sleep, right? Does sleep help? Will it stop hurting?_

“Close your eyes,” Harry whispers, closer like before on the concrete and in the ambulance, like it’s a secret. “I’ll call your mom and it’ll be okay. I’ll make sure it’s all okay. We’ll fix you.”

“Me.”

It’s garbled, barely a sound at all. Zayn knows sounds, he practically breathes sounds. It’s a small one. No one hears it but Harry. _I can speak, see?_

“You’re here.”

“Here,” Zayn sighs with an exhale, his eyes sliding shut. Soothing warmth travels from his arm, towards his chest, fluttering like a bath bomb dropped into a tub after a long day at work. The medicine gives him a hug, wraps its arms tightly around Zayn to keep him safe.

Harry squeezes his hand one last time.

“I got you.”

 

***

 

It’s all very cliché, the sounds that bombard Zayn’s eardrums in the hospital. An intercom from the hallway, a crackling television in the corner, rain, papers shuffling, squeaking shoes on tile. Zayn’s IV drip. The heart monitor to his right. He doesn’t open his eyes, but he listens.

He always pays special attention to the sounds and reverb around him, since it’s so necessary for work. His mom always says he’s a “sound man,” which isn’t even close to being accurate. He’s said it a million times, to a million of her acquaintances, that he’s never on set holding a boom mic. He’s a sound engineer, a mixer, the guy who comes in weeks after something is shot and gives a pulse to a TV episode or music video. While working at the post-production house in Atlanta, he’s helped make the squelching sounds of dinosaur footprints in mud (Zayn’s palms walking across strawberry Jell-O) and even did a mock Wilhelm Scream once, into his senior producer’s hand mic for a campy SyFy show.

He hears rain splattering against a window, and envisions it as a movie, the sound recreated in an empty studio space using thick tomato juice against a plexiglass pane. Thicker liquids equal richer sounds. That’s one of the first things Robert taught him as a Foley artist, the ones who create everyday sound effects, before hiring him as a full-time mixer. Zayn doesn’t get into the studios anymore, to play with interesting ways to make squelches and oozing geysers. Now it’s mostly sitting with editors and directors, adjusting the music levels, bumping up dialogue, mixing together the stepping of someone’s feet alongside the zooming of a passing bus, not too loud to drown out the love letter being read off screen by the main character.

Zayn knows sounds. He hears things. He mixes in his own head all the time, the rain plus the beeping machines, minus the screeching of hospital beds rolling down the halls. In his groggy headspace, Zayn wishes he could turn the bed wheels down a notch. It’s an unpleasant sound to the ears, the way they keep screeching and scratching against the cheap hospital tiles. _If I were in my booth, it’d be as easy as sliding down the level. I’d take away the menial distraction of an annoying ambient sound, and instead make the rain sound better. The rain sets the scene, makes me more sympathetic as I lay here dying. The rain is the most important sound. The audience wouldn’t even notice the difference. But I would. I do._

Someone squeezes his hand as he slips back under, before he ever even tries to open his eyes.

 

***

 

The pain slams into Zayn all at once, as if he’s been doused in icy water. Pins and needles everywhere, blinding him, twisting him like an old towel, gutting him from the inside. He yells out in pain, his voice wet, his left leg throbbing like it’s been unsuccessfully ripped from his hipbone. The blinding pain to his right arm, in a sling, almost makes him bite his tongue clean off. He prays it’ll be over soon. _I feel all of it. I’m still here. I can’t look._

“Hey, hey, hey,” a woman tries to console him to his right. “Zayn, it’s alright. I’m upping the dosage right now.”

Zayn cracks open an eye, keeping his sight away from his body and lower half, afraid of what he’ll find. He instead sees a plump middle-aged woman with pink scrubs and wobbly lipstick. She tells the truth, as she administers a clear vial into his IV. It starts in his hand first and settles into every extremity at once, a beautiful and serene calmness settling in. The sun’s been up for only an hour, Zayn can tell, as the light hits her.

“There we go,” she looks up with a smile, tossing the needle into the scary-looking bio hazardous materials box near his bed. “How are you, Zayn? Can you tell me?”

“I…” Zayn croaks, still out of it and even more groggy from the pain meds. “Mom.”

“Your mom is here, love. She’s with the doctor now.”

“You.”

“I’m Genevieve. You can call me that, or Gen, or G. Or just nurse, if you’d like,” she says in a soothing voice, holding a plastic cup of water up to his lips. “I’ll be your night shift nurse from here on out.”

“Is it…” Zayn blinks slowly, falling back under. He hasn’t spoken out loud in so long, must’ve been weeks he thinks, the water instantly cooling his insides. “When?”

“You were in an accident yesterday, Zayn. I’ll go get your mom and the doctor. How’s that sound?”

She doesn’t wait for an answer and shuffles out of the room slowly, clearly at the end of her shift, her white plastic shoes making an unpleasant sound. Zayn doesn’t like unpleasant sounds, probably more so than the average person. The world is full of beautiful music, babies laughing, whipped cream cans spraying, balloons filling with helium at birthday parties, boys with green eyes exhaling. Zayn doesn’t have time for squeaks or scrapes or tears.

He’s drifting before he knows it, in and out again, until he feels his mother’s lips against his cheek. _I’m so glad you’re here._

“Zayn, can you wake up?” a man asks, voice deep and heavy, like James Earl Jones. Like his grandpa used to sound, even when he was laughing at a stupid joke.

“Come on, sunshine. Open your eyes for us,” Trisha pets his hair, away from his eyes.

He finally does, slowly and without any sort of rush. He’s in a hospital bed for the foreseeable future, something Zayn can recognize even doped up on morphine, so he’s got nowhere else to be. They can wait. He blinks a few times, more alert than he has been since he flew through the air the day before. He’s back, sort of.

“Zayn, I’m Dr. Foreman,” the large man steps closer, nodding, a clipboard in his hand. He even looks like James Earl Jones, wide jaw and set brows. Genevieve clicks her pen to his left and gives Zayn a sweet smile. He thinks he loves her already, even with the clicking. Dr. Foreman eyes him with concern, his deep-set eyes and grooved face almost hidden by his glasses.

“James,” Zayn huffs quietly, with a smile. “'Luke, I am your father.'”

The room eases up, just as Zayn hoped it would. His mother laughs and kisses him again, lightly and with relief, as Dr. Foreman chuckles.

“If I had a nickel,” he winks at Zayn.

“Bet you’d be rich,” Zayn smiles.

“But alas, I’m not Mr. Jones. I’m just a regular old doctor.”

“So still kind of rich then, right?” Zayn says with a yawn.

Dr. Foreman laughs with a booming force, almost knocking the wind out of Zayn, his hand on Zayn’s arm like they’re old friends. Genevieve winks at Trisha, as she hands another chart to the doctor, with another click of her pen. If they become friends, Zayn will have to ask her to stop doing that.

“Alright, Zayn. Let’s get it out of the way. Do you know why you’re here?”

“Hit by a car.”

“That’s right. And do you know where?”

“Corner of Luckie and Forsythe. Not really lucky, though.”

Genevieve clicks her pen and snorts. _I like you. You think I’m funny._

“Do you remember what happened exactly?” Dr. Foreman frowns.

Zayn remembers eyes and hair, a man across the street and to his right, turning towards the diner Zayn was heading towards himself. Black shirt, black jeans, boots. Hips. A phone in his hand, reading a text that must’ve been hilarious. He threw his head back and cackled. Even over the rush of traffic, Zayn swore he could hear it. The tilt of it. The knocking of his teeth, as he tried to hold it in. He looked up and saw Zayn staring. He waved. Just a finger, one tossed up like they knew each other. Smiled so wide, Zayn almost heard it crack in two.

Zayn doesn’t fully remember walking into oncoming traffic, just the flight through the air afterwards, and he has the distinct feeling that smile is the reason why.

“No,” Zayn lies.

Dr. Foreman makes a quick note of it in Zayn’s chart, before snatching the penlight from the breast pocket of his white coat. He flashes it in Zayn’s eyes, the right followed by the left, a quick back and forth. To test him.

“Can you tell me your full name?”

“Zayn Javadd Malik.”

“And how old are you?”

“Twenty five.”

“When is your birthday?”

“January 12th, 1993.”

“Great, Zayn. So great. What year is it?”

“Twenty-eighteen,” Zayn sighs, exhausted. His eyes prickle.

His mother grips his hand tighter between hers, but as always, her hands are freezing. There isn’t a warmth to them, not like the hands that held onto him in the ambulance.

“Zayn, we had to operate on you. You had pretty serious internal bleeding. You have a concussion. A pretty serious one. So you should get used to these questions now,” Dr. Foreman pushes his glasses up his nose. “I’ll be checking on you each morning, as your primary doctor here at Grady Memorial.”

Zayn nods, his eyes sliding closed. He can’t really feel anything at the moment, certainly not any pain, but he feels the healing wounds and stiches across his chest, covered with gauze, rubbing against the hospital gown. It makes a weird sound, like a soft rustling. Maybe like a mouse behind a baseboard, settling in for the day.

“And in about an hour, we need to get you into surgery again. We’re going to start prepping you.”

“For what?” Zayn yawns again, drowsy and floating away. “What’s broken?”

Something has to be broken. The pain he felt as he woke up, the white-hot blinding pain that sent shards of glass up and down his lower half, up and over his right arm and shoulder, has to be from something. _It’s not good. Just say it._

“You have a broken collarbone. You also broke your leg, son. In three places. The femur in two spots, up here in the middle of your thigh, and your lower leg. You also broke your left wrist. We need to set the bones and fix them.”

Zayn tucks his head to the side, chin on his shoulder, ready to go off again.

“Along with these breaks, you’re pretty bruised up on the inside. We need to keep you here for a while. Do you understand, Zayn? Surgery today, a few weeks of traction here while the bones in your leg set, followed by a follow-up surgery, and a final few days of recovery.”

They begin mumbling about him, like he’s not even there, but Zayn can’t be bothered. The medicine Genevieve gave him, that delicious cotton candy flavored bubble gum he used to chew in little league, floats through each vein until he can’t help but smile. _I think I can taste it, ma. It’s sweet._

“Sleep tight, sunshine. I’ll see you afterwards.”

A hand on his right ankle. Click. Squeak. Shuffle. A tug on his IV, to check. To assess. To monitor. They’re going to fix him right up.

“Hey,” Zayn sniffles a little, settling in further, almost off the diving board. “Can you ask Gen to stop clicking her pen?”

They all laugh, the little group of people there to make sure he gets better, like Harry The Stranger said. _You were right._

 

***

 

It feels like a running theme, or a recurring nightmare, as Zayn’s eyes fly open. The pain surges through him, reminding him of being dragging down an angry river, slamming against rocks, his skull in pieces under his skin, his legs nothing but twigs, broken and mangled. His arm engulfs in flames and he has the thought that if he were a bird, his wing would be crumpled and useless, shards of bone sticking out of the socket, mocking him.

He screams for someone, anyone, to make it go away, to ease it somehow. _It’s hopeless, this is it, I can’t do it, I can’t._

Trisha isn’t there, only a vase of flowers and a card propped up in her absence. The beeping to his right goes into overdrive, the heart monitor clipped to his index finger tightening like a vice grip.

Zayn’s pretty positive it couldn’t get any worse, the hot tears springing to his eyes to remind him he can’t move, until he actually looks down. They took the neck brace off ages ago, but he never tried to look at his body until that moment. And when he does, he vomits onto his own chest.

He cries out again, wailing, hands slapping at the plastic barriers on either side of the hospital bed. _This is it. I can’t._

Zayn sees the hair first, the curls coming through the door at breakneck speed. Then it’s the eyes and the hips, blue scrubs, hands curled around a stethoscope and a chart, coming towards him. It’s Harry, the stranger, the one near the diner, the warm hands in the ambulance, the whisper in his ear like they shared a secret.

“Zayn, it’s okay. It’s okay, Zayn,” he babbles, tossing the contents from his hands to the side table near the bed. In no time at all, he has a pair of gloves on, hitting buttons, eyes dancing across the machines and IV fluids, checking, assessing.

“I can’t,” Zayn wails, eyes slammed shut. “I can’t.”

“I got it, I got you. One sec,” Harry assures him, as someone else flies into the room.

Zayn listens hard, the shoes of someone new, the rushed conversation between the two of them. He’s still crying, like a fucking toddler, when he opens his eyes. Harry nods to him and bites the plastic cap off a syringe, before swiftly injecting it into his IV tube. Zayn watches, strains his ears to see if it has a sound, if it’s something he’ll need to recreate for a medical drama someday, but it’s silent. Harry pinches it, not too fast, the clear liquid rushing through the plastic tubing until finally, eons later, Zayn feels it.

He actually sighs as it hits him, exhales like he’s sinking into a hot tub. It’s music, a symphony, a chorus of sopranos guiding him home.

“Better?”

Zayn can only nod, his face slack. Every major muscle group relaxes, each ligament and vein and fingernail tucking in for a good night’s sleep. It’s only four in the afternoon, so says the clock on the opposite wall, but it feels like midnight. It’s like a midnight snack, all Zayn’s favorite foods, baked into a pie together, shoved into a tube connected to his hand.

“S’like a pie,” he mumbles.

“It sure is,” Harry smiles, like he understands.

“Are you my nurse?”

“I’m one of them, yes.”

“Can’t believe you’re a nurse. Can’t believe you work here.”

“So you remember me then,” Harry smiles at him, sheepishly. “The world is full of surprises, I suppose.”

_Of course I remember you. You stopped traffic. Or maybe that was my pelvis and femur. Who knows._

But Zayn nods in agreement, because that _is_ life, isn’t it. Just the morning before, he was wondering what kind of omelet to order at that diner, and now his body is being held together by steel and gauze. His muscles feel amazing, like he’s sitting on top of a washing machine on spin cycle, but his face feels weird. Hot. He reaches with his fucked up left hand, his wrist covered in a cast, to feel the cuts and scrapes along his cheeks. The skin feels tight. _Weird._

Harry watches him touch his own face, his shaking fingers tracing the cuts, before he drops his arm. He can’t seem to care about them just yet, not when he remembers the vomit, or the way Harry’s fingers feel against his skin. He can’t move his right arm well, not in the sling, so Harry has to help him shift it, to get changed.

He should be embarrassed as Harry works to remove the flimsy vomit-stained hospital gown covering his torso, as he glances down to see a catheter sticking out of him. _I hope that doesn’t hurt my junk in the long run, fucking hell._ He can’t help but giggle.

“It won’t.”

_Shit, have I been saying all this out loud the whole time?_

“Not the whole time, just now,” Harry smiles at him, tossing the stained gown into the bin in the corner. “I’m going to clean you up and change you now.”

Zayn nods slowly, too tired to care. Harry must be a good nurse, one of the best even, as he dresses Zayn, each arm through the armholes, extra careful with the right one. He’s gentle, but firm as he places Zayn’s face against his chest, looking over Zayn’s shoulder to tie the new gown in place. It’s awkward, to be dressed by another grown man, without the full motion of your arms or the capacity to actually lean far enough forward.

“My leg is fucked,” Zayn yawns as Harry lays his head back on the pillow. “Did you see?”

“It’s called a traction device,” Harry adjusts his blankets over the one leg actually able to be under them, careful of Zayn’s propped up left leg defying the odds, like some sort of science fiction experiment gone wrong. “Dr. Foreman will explain everything. You’re going to be just fine.”

“There are pins sticking out of my leg. I can see them. See? See all the rods and screws holding it together?”

“I see them.”

“It’s fucked.”

“It’s healing.”

“Guess my dream of becoming an Olympic ice skater just went to shit,” Zayn scrunches up his nose, laughing at his own joke.

“Do you ice skate?” Harry gapes at him, immediately entranced.

“No.”

Harry frowns, like it would’ve been the coolest thing in the world, to be the nurse of an Olympic ice skater. Zayn almost tells him to never give up on his dream, that he’ll have an Olympian in this hospital eventually, surely, but instead Zayn shuts his eyes.

Harry continues to check on him as Zayn listens. The cool stethoscope down his chest, Harry asking him to inhale and exhale. The shift of his body when Harry does the same thing on both sides of his upper back, _inhale for me, now exhale slowly._

He gets another dose of some medicine, another vial in his IV. Zayn knows he can’t hear it necessarily, but he hears Harry. His movements and the shifting of his weight. An ear thermometer. Blood pressure. Cool, wet liquid to the cuts on his face. The scribbling of Harry’s pen, over and over in his chart.

“Zayn, I need you here for this part,” Harry says in a quiet, soothing voice, removing his gloves. “Can you open your eyes?”

Zayn follows the instruction, their eyes meeting. Harry’s penlight, to each eye, Zayn’s pupils contracting.

“Can you tell me your full name?”

“Zayn Javadd Malik.”

“How old are you?”

“Twenty five.”

“When is your birthday?”

“January 12th, 1993.”

“And what year is it?”

“Twenty-eighteen,” Zayn whispers, too tired.

“Can you feel this?” Harry’s eyes widen, a little too serious for Zayn’s liking. In his drugged-out haze, Zayn almost has to ask, _feel what?_

But thankfully, luckily, magically, he doesn’t need to ask.

Harry’s hand is warm, enveloping and soft, as it curls around Zayn’s left ankle. His leg, completely propped up and above his hips level on the bed, has rods of metal sticking out every which way. Zayn always thought when steel rods were used to fix bones, they were put on the inside. Not like this. Never in a million years did he think he’d ever look down at his own body, and see this. Open wounds, gauze, slings and pulleys holding it in place, connected to a massive contraption surrounding the hospital bed, his small ankle and foot barely visible from his pillow.

But he can feel Harry’s hand. He tightens his fingers around Zayn’s ankle as Zayn nods, _I can feel you_ , before moving to tap the underside of Zayn’s foot with his index finger.

“Do you feel this?”

“Yes.”

“Any tingling or numbness?”

“No.”

“Can you wiggle your toes for me?”

Zayn almost asks if it’ll hurt, but decides not to. _I can move my goddamn toes. Come on, Zayn. Get a grip._ Harry nods with a smile as Zayn’s big toe knocks against his fingers a few times.

“Perfect. You’re doing great, Zayn.”

“So it’s all still connected, then,” Zayn smiles lazily. “All still works, except for the parts that don’t?”  
“You’re healing, I told you. This traction device won’t be forever. Dr. Foreman will tell you everything. Just tell me if you get cold, or if you want me to cover your left foot. I can.”

Harry comes up near his head again and scribbles in his chart, his hand flying fast. Zayn likes that sound. He likes the sound of anything productive. He likes Harry’s handwriting. His entire face darkens when he concentrates on the chart, brows drawn together, lips in a straight line. Zayn shouldn’t interrupt him. Nurse Harry needs to make it legible, needs to update his doctor, needs to be left to it.

“S’at you writing?” Zayn can’t help himself.

“It’s your C-M-S check. I need to make sure your circulation is as it should be.”

“So my toes are pretty important now, huh?”

“Sure,” Harry laughs, not looking up.

Zayn can hear his mom in the hallway, chatting up another nurse, maybe a doctor. _She deserves a doctor. Maybe some hotshot surgeon. Maybe someone who helps people could make her happy, like dad never could._

“She’ll be right in,” Harry offers. “She’s been here almost constantly since you got admitted. You have a good mom.”

“I do.”

Harry shuts the chart and begins to move away, eyes up on Zayn’s IV bag, checking, assessing.

“Thank you,” Zayn sighs, rubbing his eyes with his left hand, belatedly remembering the cast there to set his broken and mangled wrist. It scratches against his beard, making a rough swishing sound.

Harry doesn’t say anything as he tosses the used latex gloves towards the medical waste bin. But he smiles to himself.

“Thanks for staying with me on the ground, and riding with me here, and calling my mom. Thanks for saying my name out loud. I needed that.”

Zayn’s almost asleep as he says it all, each small thank you tumbling out one after the other, like building blocks or Tinker Toys in a pile in his lap. Zayn used to play with them when he was little, to make forts for his other toys, houses and cabins for them to live in. _I should look for those in the attic some day._

“Of course,” Harry touches his right knee in comfort. “It’s my job, after all.”

“Mmmm,” Zayn drifts further.

And then easy as anything, he’s asleep.

 

***

 

That’s how it goes for the next three days. Zayn, in and out every few hours, when either Harry or Gen comes to give him relief with that cotton candy bubble gum morphine. Harry told him that first day that they’d be checking in every four hours, on a specific schedule, to get his vitals and ask the questions. Zayn says his name, age, birthday, and year each and every time they wake him up. He wiggles his toes. He feels Harry’s warm hands touching his skin, or Gen’s cool fingers, to check the pulse in his leg, to make sure it hasn’t gone blue. _Blue isn’t good, of course. Blue means blood. Blue means a problem. We want your skin plump and pink, yeah?_ Zayn could only nod at Harry when he explained it. Fuck blue.

They have to “turn” him every two hours, without ever actually moving his tractioned leg. His cousins used to make fun of him for his “bony ass” and it’s back to haunt him with a vengeance, since “bony prominences” can lead to skin breakdown. His ass, elbows, and heels get shifted with pillows every two hours. Every. Two. Hours.

If it weren’t for the drugs keeping him lethargic and out of it, Zayn’s pretty sure he’d be more pissed off. It’s not just the fact that he can’t sleep uninterrupted for longer than a few hours, but the fact that an entire team of people surround him to literally take care of him around the clock. His mom admits as much, when Zayn slightly groans as Gen shifts him on that third morning, from one ass cheek to the other, annoyed at the intrusion to his sleep, helpless and cranky at feeling like a toddler. A toddler is all he can envision, since he can’t use his right arm and his mom has to spoon-feed him for every fucking meal.

“He was the same as a boy, I swear,” she sighs, pushing her hair out of her face. “Used to be worse back then. I’d try to feed him chicken soup when he came home sick from school, and he’d pout the whole time. Wouldn’t let me worry.”

That brings Zayn back though, as Gen wraps up her last night before a few days off, as Harry comes in to do their shift change check-in. They always hug, Harry with a fresh face and clean hair, ready for the day, whereas Gen looks about five seconds from falling over from exhaustion. Zayn likes to watch this morning interaction, and the nightly one when it was reversed, Harry exhausted and hunched over, from caring for Zayn and the other patients on this floor. They have camaraderie, a partnership, on the days and nights they work together. It looks worn in, like they’ve been doing it for years. Zayn likes that.

Zayn shakes his head though, a little clearer than he’s been since his surgery day, only slightly uncomfortable from the pain. He focuses instead on his mom, sitting next to his bed, her eyes drooping. He doesn’t want her to worry, he never did.

“You should go home, ma,” Zayn says around the chunks of ice he insists on. He likes ice.

“No, I’m good. I’m here.”

“You need to sleep. You need food, and to go to work. You can’t keep missing your shifts.”

He gives her a look, the look he used to give her in high school, when she’d insist on going to his plays instead of working overtime at the dentist’s office. It’s the look she hates, the necessary one.

He reaches for her with his left hand, his white cast nudging her wrist. She grips his fingers and kisses them, nodding.

“I’ll be back tomorrow.”

“Or the next day,” he shrugs. “Whenever. I’m fine here. You got me, right Harry?”

Harry looks up, bewildered, and nods. Zayn’s chart slips in his fingers, all the paperwork piling up now, the longer he stays. He gives Trisha a wide smile, bright and glowing, like the first time Zayn saw it. It’s blinding. It takes up all the oxygen in the room.

 

***

 

A few hours later, after Dr. Foreman checks in, Zayn settles back into bed while Harry moves around him to do whatever the hell Harry does, giving him different medications, checking his vitals, and asking him the last round of questions. Apparently Zayn’s concussion is no longer a cause for concern. He still has to wiggle his toes though, over and over to prove that they still work.

“So how was your night with Genevieve, then? Good?” Harry ponders, as he cleans the steel rods protruding from Zayn’s leg, his inedible hospital lunch uneaten to his right.

It’s one of the worst parts so far, the feeling of cool, rust colored iodine being rubbed into the disgusting open wounds covering his poor appendage. Dr. Foreman said he had to lie in this awful bed, with the metal framework surrounding his leg from upper thigh all the way to his ankle, for another three weeks, until they do another surgery to remove it. They had to keep the pins clean, to prevent infection, and couldn’t let the skin heal through. It was tedious and gross, and Zayn almost always looked the other way.

But then Zayn scowls, because this is hardly the only uncomfortable thing he’s had to deal with. Harry, the beautiful man who literally stopped Zayn’s brain function enough for him to step in front of a fucking Honda, has to empty Zayn’s urine every other hour. He’s had to change his fucking bedpan. Harry has cleaned his wounds, felt his gross feet, changed his catheter, and the only saving grace so far has been Zayn’s drugged up cerebellum. He at least could fall into a dreamlike state whenever it’s gotten to be too much.

Nothing goes Zayn’s way these days though, because Dr. Foreman also informed him that morning that his meds were being adjusted. Apparently the first few days after surgery, they drug you up good with the _good_ stuff. Morphine drips, Demerol, codeine, the shit Harry and Gen measure with careful precision each and every time. _Now I get what, some Tylenol when my fucking femur feels like it’s been broken all over again? Bullshit. And now I have to be present for all the shitty parts. Literally._

Zayn can’t help the flush to his cheeks and chest, as he thinks about the bodily functions Harry will have to help him with, totally and one hundred percent aware now. Those green eyes, that hair, his strong hands, all right there in front of Zayn, not on a date in a nice restaurant, but in a hospital. Surrounded by shit.

“Zayn?”

“Yeah,” Zayn coughs into his good hand, red and embarrassed.

Harry stops rubbing the iodine into the screw directly above Zayn’s knee, to get his attention.

“Are you okay?”

“I’m fine.”

“Are you sure? How’s your pain?”

“I’m fine.”

Harry lets it go, lets Zayn close himself off. He finishes on Zayn’s leg and then makes his way out of the room with a sheepish smile. _He can read minds, I fucking swear. He knows._ _Jesus, it can’t get much worse than this though, can it?_

 

***

 

The next time Harry comes into Zayn’s room to check on him, Zayn sees it. He sees the look of concern cross Harry’s face, as he looks down at the bag attached to Zayn’s bed, the one collecting his urine.

Zayn’s cheeks flame red from embarrassment, until suddenly his heart begins to race. _Pee shouldn’t be that color._

Harry excuses himself, but Zayn sees it. _You’re worried, aren’t you._ Pee isn’t supposed to resemble rust.

Dr. Foreman arrives a few minutes later, snapping on a pair of gloves.

 

***

 

Over the next few days, Zayn’s glad to have more alone time. He asks friends not to visit often, feigning exhaustion, and insists his mom work overtime. It’s convenient that Harry and Gen both have three days off from the hospital, because it helps him come to terms with the fact that this is life for the immediate future. It’s a hard adjustment to make, so he’s glad the two people who have been the most kind to him aren’t around to see him sulking.

He has an acute kidney injury caused by the accident. Bruising. _My poor medullas._ It’s another thing to add to the list, a body part not working correctly. Zayn wished, prayed with all his might, that it wouldn’t disrupt his daily routine more than his leg and collarbone already have, but no dice: they up his IV meds to more shit he can’t pronounce and restrict his water intake. They won’t even let him chew on ice anymore, something he’s always enjoyed when he’s bored because he likes the sound.

_I’m an adult and they won’t let me have water. This is my fucking life now._

The day nurse, some guy who asks Zayn to call him Smith, doesn’t say much, which Zayn appreciates. He’d rather not be friends with another person helping him reach up for the metal bar above his bed, to move up onto a bedpan, or lash out at him for not getting him ice. And the night nurse, Miss Koehler, is around the same age as Gen. She makes him feel better when he gets stiff or overly woe-is-me, which is every few hours. He doesn’t cry, though. She tries to hold his hand once, but it’s another connection he’d rather not make, so he keeps his mouth shut unless she asks him a specific question about his meds.

Eventually a few friends visit here and there, guys from work and his neighbor Jack. They bring food and DVDs, which is rather nice. Robert wishes him well and politely asks him to stop checking in to work. He says they all just want him to get better and heal properly, without worrying about the teen vampire drama that needs his mixing skills. He also eases Zayn’s mind by saying he’s on paid medical leave, and that his mom has already gotten a handle on what bills need to be paid when. God bless Trisha Malik.

He tries to read the books Trisha brings him, but that doesn’t work. Every story is boring. He tries to nap, since he’s always loved a good afternoon nap, but his body knows now that if the sun’s out, he’s awake. He tries the movies and Netflix, iPad games, texting, anything. It all blows. And then when the pain kicks in, for the few minutes before a nurse comes to give him more, Zayn feels like a nuclear bomb goes off in his chest, anger roiling through him.

At a certain point, like some fairytale princess locked up in a tower, Zayn finds himself doing what he did as a kid while waiting for his mom to get home from work: he lays in his quiet room, listening to the world around him. It’s just the same sounds over and over here though, a series of wheels, paperwork, kids visiting their grandparents after hip replacements, nurses calling out jokes to one another, a Code Blue alarm. It’s all very depressing.

Zayn goes to sleep the last night without Harry and Gen with the distinct feeling that he’s losing his fucking mind.

 

***

 

Their first date is out of a Nicholas Sparks novel. It’s some restaurant Harry said he heard about, far from downtown Atlanta that serves you right there on the sloping lawn of a park. It’s like their own personal picnic under the stars and string lights, a server bringing a cheese plate and wine to start.

Zayn can’t stop staring at Harry, as they kick back and Harry tells him all about his hobbies. He likes to hike when he can, even during the sweltering Georgia summers. He even has a lucky walking stick. He has a cat. He likes to take care of people. Zayn could listen to Harry’s voice all day, the melodic dips to it, the crests and valleys like iambic pentameter.

Harry leans closer after they eat their chicken entrees, and move onto dessert.

“Chocolate covered strawberries,” Harry winks at him, his dimple so deep and prominent, Zayn wants to live inside it.

Zayn feels punch drunk, or maybe just wine drunk, silly and a little sloppy like he gets when he drinks too much red. But Harry doesn’t seem to mind, as his fingers twirl against his knee, long fingers playing with the threads of Zayn’s ripped jeans. It tickles a little, and normally Zayn would shift away from the sensation. Harry has that effect on him though, this weird twinge of _I think I should be closer, can I sit in your lap, or maybe on your face?_

Zayn absolutely blushes at the thought, as Harry scrunches his nose up at him, like he knows.

“You’re so sweet,” Harry cocks his head, cheek against his shoulder, looking at Zayn like he’s the sweetest thing he’s ever seen.

“No. You are.”

It sounds so dumb and childish, Zayn’s cheeks flaming even more fiercely than before.

“Can I kiss you?” Harry scoots up next to him, their wine glasses knocking together, making a sound like a wind chime breezing on a front porch.

Zayn doesn’t give an answer, because he leans in to kiss Harry first, to shove every emotion he has into it, before Harry can second-guess the question, before he realizes Zayn is boring and just likes to sit in quiet silences sometimes so he can hear the nat sound around him. He kisses Harry before Harry realizes he forgets to look both ways before he crosses a street. Harry kisses back, and the taste they make together is sinful, ripe like a strawberry and tart like chocolate. Zayn moves even closer, their knees touching.

But then Zayn jerks away, at the pulsing blood between them too warm against his skin. He’s bleeding everywhere, the rusty pins and bent metal suddenly sticking out of his infected left leg at odd, gnashing angles. His ribs crack, all of his internal organs slicing open. There’s so much blood, coursing over him right onto Harry, ruining his jeans and his shirt.

Zayn tries to say sorry, to stop it with his hands, but his left wrist cast gets in the way, and his other hand is useless, since it’s holding the wine glass suddenly full of iodine. It’s everywhere, it smells like a hospital, he can’t breathe.

He finally looks up to Harry’s face and before he can open his mouth, Harry touches his cheek and shakes his head, like he feels sorry for him.

Zayn wakes up drenched in sweat, with his arm aching and his leg on fire.

 

***

 

It’s been a week since Zayn was admitted to the hospital and he’s barely put a dent in his stay. He’s not even close to being discharged, and he needs to get a grip. Once he calms down from his dream, Miss Koehler allows him to drink water and eat a banana. It makes him feel better and worse all at once. Even as he starts to lose it, at the thought of being fed like a fucking toddler, he grips her hand once, as a thank you. _So much for keeping my distance._

Dr. Foreman comes in right on time, at eight on the dot, Harry trailing behind him in bright red scrubs, his hair in a knot. They both squirt hand sanitizer, the squelch it makes near Zayn’s bed one of his favorite hospital sounds. _Never thought I’d have a favorite, to be honest. It must be happening already. I’m being Stockholmed by this fucking place._

Harry smiles at Zayn like he hasn’t seen him in weeks, instead of just a couple days, and Zayn smiles in return.

Miss Koehler fills them in on Zayn’s vitals and general info. At the week mark, it’s officially time to keep track of the rest of Zayn’s body. He hears words like _bed sores_ and _pressure ulcers_ , _range of motion exercises_ and _respiratory function._ But all he sees, all he focuses on, is Harry.

Harry listens and nods, jots a few notes into Zayn’s chart, as Dr. Foreman tells him what meds Zayn will need for the week. Half a hydrocodone when the pain is bad, a full dilaudid when it’s even worse. A stool softener. Heparin to prevent clotting. More medicine for his kidney, since the tests show it hasn’t quite rebounded to where it should be. Harry is directed to turn Zayn every two hours, same as always, and to do a full assessment every four.

Dr. Foreman advises Zayn to get himself ready, mentally and as physically as he can, for the inevitable physical therapy after his second surgery. And then he gives a polite smile on his way out the door.

“It sure is a lot of shit, for an idiot like me who walked into oncoming traffic,” Zayn sighs twenty minutes later, as Harry touches his ankle and foot, looking over his skin.

“How do you mean?” Harry frowns.

“I don’t know, I guess… I just wish you all could spend your time and energy helping like, cancer patients. Or people who get sick or injured by some freak accident. I did this to myself, you know?”

“Not on purpose,” Harry frowns further.

“Still.”

“Besides,” Harry smiles nervously, “I’m sort of the one to blame, aren’t I?”

They haven’t explicitly discussed the fact that they locked eyes right before Zayn got hit, or the fact that Harry’s wave was clearly an invitation. He motioned for Zayn, beckoned him over, a wave to say _hello_ , but also to say _what are you doing later?_

Harry shrugs as he makes his way back up towards Zayn’s head, clicking his pen a final time. He adjusts the pillow under Zayn’s ass, as Zayn leans against Harry’s chest for balance. He wishes he could use his hands somehow, to grip Harry in a real way. _I miss having hands._ Then Harry fixes the pillow from under Zayn’s left elbow, over to this right elbow, to ease his bony joints. Zayn catches a brief flash of his face in the metal of Harry’s stethoscope, the scars and scabs, the hair on his chin, and he doesn’t even recognize himself.

Harry reaches out like he’s about to touch Zayn, his face or his neck, but his hand drops at the last second.

“You shouldn’t let yourself think that, though,” Harry rushes, to finish the conversation from before. “That’s why we do what we do. Something’s broken, so we help mend it. You’re sick, so we make you feel better. It doesn’t matter how you got here.”

Zayn nods, diplomatically, even though he still wishes Harry could be helping someone more deserving.

“I’ll be back in a minute for your bath,” Harry finishes, his cheeks pink, slipping out the door.

Zayn smacks himself on the forehead with his cast, mortified. He always has Gen help him clean himself, whenever she comes in for her night shifts. He reasoned he’s a night-showerer anyways. But his stupid fucking chart must’ve given it away, that he didn’t do it the night before. His dream comes creeping back in, the park and the wine, kissing Harry. _He’s going to see my hard on and then I’ll have to smother myself with a pillow. My mom is going to miss me terribly, but it’s the only option._

He very nearly sends her a goodbye text, followed by a text to Robert and his friend Danny, to make sure his equipment goes to a good home, when Harry comes back into the room. He has a bucket of warm water, a few rags, and that special soap Gen said doesn’t need to be rinsed off. It smells like lemons, and not nice scented lemons, but more like oven cleaner.

They don’t speak as Harry helps Zayn remove his gown. He graciously looks away as Zayn covers his dick and the catheter with the blanket, and then gets to work on Zayn’s back. Zayn can’t get his wrist cast wet, or move his right arm, so it’s with his head bowed that Zayn sits and lets Harry wipe him down. Something fractures then, deep in Zayn’s chest, his cheeks red. Harry’s gentle, so gentle Zayn feels his lip shaking, eyes closed. When Harry helps him redress himself, they both look away.

They don’t speak later when Harry comes back to shift his pillows to the opposite sides, or when he lifts at Zayn’s left arm and has him get the blood flowing. It’s exhausting work, wind milling his arm over and over, lifting his good right leg to bend it, moving his muscles. He almost gives up, until Harry smiles at him and wordlessly says he can keep going.

When Harry and Gen do their shift change later that night, Harry has bags under his eyes from all the patients he had that day. Zayn never asks about the other people Harry takes care of on a day-to-day basis, and he figures even if he did, Harry wouldn’t say. But Zayn knows all the patients, like him, must be very needy. _I need you for almost everything, don’t I._

He vows to not give Harry any trouble the next morning, or complain when Harry has to move the pillows or ask him to move his toes. Even as he cracks his neck, the twinge of pain creeping in to almost every appendage, when he grits his teeth and tries not to focus on it, he vows to be Harry’s easy patient from now on.

Harry pops in his room once he’s back in his street clothes. He walks in after a polite knock, wearing black jeans and a white button up, a hideous thing that shows off his chest. Trisha follows him in, flustered after her own stressful day at work, talking a mile a minute. They both turn to her at the same time, with wide eyes.

“Oh,” she finally stops, her bag almost off her shoulder. “I… I think I left something in the car, I’ll be right back.”

Zayn has the brief thought that maybe Harry’s here to ask him out, or express his undying affection for him. He has a look on his face that Zayn can’t place. But then he remembers he’s bed ridden for another month, with a leg broken in three places, and a fucked up wrist, so he’s not exactly a catch at the moment. His hair’s a mess and he needs a shave so badly, he’s starting to look like a ZZ Top.

“I brought you something,” Harry steps closer to his bed, as Zayn realizes he has his hands behind his back.

“You didn’t have to.”

“I know that.”

Zayn bites his lip, anxiously waiting for the surprise. Harry definitely didn’t have to do anything further than what he already has. But since he went ahead and did it already, Zayn holds his cast out with a laugh.

“You barely eat the hospital food, which is ridiculous because I checked, and it is very much healthy for you. It gives you all the nutrients you need,” he muses, mock annoyance laced in every word.

“You eat it then,” Zayn quirks an eyebrow.

Harry cocks his hip, thinking.

“Fair point.”

Zayn’s won, which he pats himself on the back for.

“So I brought you some food from home,” Harry brings the box from behind his back. “I see you sneaking candy from your mom’s purse constantly, so here is some of your own. I made cookies, too. Nothing fancy, just like… chocolate chip.”

He sets the box in Zayn’s lap, closest to his good leg, pointing out various items inside, including a loaf of banana bread his own mother made, as well as a few baggies of homemade trail mix. Zayn stares down at it, listens to the sounds it makes, the rustling of plastic and wax paper around the cookies.

“Like I said, nothing fancy. Or exciting. But none of it was made in this here hospital, so I figure you can eat it whenever you need a little something extra,” Harry finishes with a shrug, stepping back.

Zayn listens for the beating of his own heart first and foremost, for the rushing of blood in his veins that he’s almost positive Harry can hear. A woman out in the hall squeals with delight, at her loved one walking again. The nurses cheer with them, the CNAs clapping their hands. This recovery floor, for orthopedic patients like Zayn, and other surgical recoveries, is full of people learning to walk again, or getting the blood flowing to new kidneys and lungs, their families urging them on to take just three more steps. It’s lovely, and Zayn hasn’t gotten tired of listening yet.

But it’s not the time, he can’t zero in on anyone else but Harry, so he brings his eyes up. Harry watches him, smiling, like he did across that busy street just a week ago, with a glint in his eye. It says _I don’t know you yet, but I think I like what I see._

Zayn likes what he sees, as well.

“Will you go on a date with me?” Zayn rushes out in one full breath, his face open and devoid of all emotion.

It’s not what Harry expected, clearly, as he takes a step back, dumbfounded.

“Should I not have said that?” Zayn winces.

“No, you… you can say that, you can say whatever you want, Zayn. It’s… I mean, it’s a free country,” Harry rubs at his neck.

“Sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry, it’s just… I’m your nurse. I’m here to… I just take care of you, you know?

“I know,” Zayn looks back to the box in his lap.

_You’ve seen me at my worst, at my grossest, the lowest point of my life. You’ve taken care of me beyond anything I’ve ever seen a human being do for another human being. There’s something to be said for the kind of person who can be that selfless. But I thought it was more than just your job. When it came to me._

“I want to,” Harry surges forward, close like he was before, reading Zayn’s mind. “I really want to. I wanted to the second I waved at you. I especially wanted to when you held my hand in that ambulance like a lifeline, I swear it.”

Zayn looks back up to him, hopeful.

“But we can’t do anything while you’re here. I can’t overstep that boundary, not as your nurse.”

“So afterwards, then,” Zayn smiles, nodding like a mad man. “After I’m discharged and walking again. Then, yeah?”

Harry laughs and ruffles his hair, before heading to the door.

“Easy there, Casanova. We’ll see how you feel in a few weeks.”

“I’ll still want to go on a date in a few weeks.”

“Maybe.”

“I will.”

Harry has his hand on the door, as the crowd in the hall amps up again. Whoever stood up from a wheelchair apparently wants to do a little dance, as they all worry for him, afraid he’ll fall. But a nurse still turns up a radio station, just enough so Zayn can hear Mariah Carey’s voice.

He zones back in, to Harry staring at him, the noise in the hall long forgotten.

“Recovery is going to be really hard, Zayn. It’s not as easy as just standing up,” Harry gestures to the people in the hallway.

_It’s already hard. All of this is. You’ve made it better._

“It’s not a party,” Harry shakes his head, still trying to convince Zayn, speaking to his conscience. “Your initial recovery here, and the physical therapy once the casts are off, may be the hardest thing you ever do. I’ll be the first one pushing you, making you do it, forcing you to move, even when you’re crying in agony. That’ll be me, the person in your face, pressing the bruise, shoving you off the diving board. The guy you _hate_ because it hurts. I’ll be _that_ guy.”

_Are you trying to convince me, or yourself? I don’t think I could ever hate you. I want to kiss the worry right off your face._

Harry bites his lip, nervous.

“I’ll still want to date you.”

“We’ll see,” Harry nods politely, his cheeks pink, still unsure. “I know I said I always love my job, and I do… most days. But on the days when a patient really pushes me to the edge, when I’m just trying to help, I’m not so nice.”

“You’re always nice.”

Harry blinks at him.

“Enjoy your cookies,” Harry ends up shrugging, ignoring that last part.

“Thanks,” Zayn smiles to settle him. “Thanks for all this.”

“Sleep well,” Harry finally shuffles out the door, with a wink. “And tell Gen to move your ass pillow first thing.”

Zayn flushes red at that, the box in his hands crinkling slightly from how tightly he’s holding it. His right arm screams at him to relieve the pressure, but Zayn presses the bruise, shoves off the diving board. So Harry thinks Zayn might hate him, and they can’t date because Harry can’t overstep anything by acknowledging his feelings just yet.

But apparently Harry can flirt a little and reference Zayn’s ass with a wink.

It’s a start.

 

***

The next few days are painful, to say the least. Dr. Foreman assures Zayn that it’s normal, his leg bones realigning, adjusting to the metal rod put in place from hip to knee. It’s his immune system figuring out how it all fits together, that it’s apart of him now. His collarbone, something that should be healing rather quickly, reminds Zayn of a wishbone, something shitty distant cousins snap into pieces at Thanksgiving, because they can. _This is fucking bullshit._ Zayn grits his teeth so often, he’s afraid for his jaw as well.

Whenever Harry gives him his medicine, not as often as Zayn would like, another nurse has to accompany him. The pill he’s only supposed to take half of, a second nurse has to sign off as saying they saw Harry rinse the other half down the drain. For his intravenous meds, they have to type a password into the computer near Zayn’s bed to say that Harry gave him the small dosage Dr. Foreman will allow. On the last of Harry’s three-in-a-row twelve-hour shifts, Zayn tried to make a joke about Harry saving the other half of all his medicine, if it ever gets to be too much, and Harry practically clutched his chest.

“I could get fired for that,” he scoffed angrily, shoving Zayn’s food tray towards him, handing him a fork to his left, non-dominant hand. “Eat your dinner.”

Zayn waits until Harry leaves the room, to shove the tray away again. _I’d rather not be reminded that I’m right-handed and can’t fucking do it without help, thank you very much._

The nights are worse, when his mom is around. Zayn tries hard to tough it out, so she won’t fret over him or worry too much, but it’s hard. Genevieve smooths his hair when he can’t stop clenching what feels like his entire body, over and over, the beeping of the machine to his right driving him fucking insane, his leg a useless, pathetic slab of cut up meat, throbbing to spite him.

He tries to eat the candy Harry gave him, but that only works when Harry’s actually around, to eat a few pieces alongside Zayn during his breaks. Zayn feels lighter when Harry’s around, like instead of an overgrown nine-month-old with laughable motor skills, he’s back to being himself. _I can flirt and laugh and sing. I have boys at my feet too, you know. I could._ Harry must know because he always stares at Zayn when he talks, and then pretends like he shouldn’t when Zayn stares back at him.

Gen must know how Harry make Zayn feel, like a real person again, because she rarely tries to sit with him whenever she wakes him up every four hours to check his vitals. It’s not the same if it’s not Harry.

By the time he hits the end of his second week in bed, all he can hear is the beeping of his heart, the whirr of the light bulbs directly above his bed. All he can focus on is the squeaking of the floor in the hall, the ding of the elevator, the swish of a janitor’s broom.

Zayn used to spend hours when he was younger, soaking up the sounds around him, using his ears to reach further and further, to test himself with how far he could pick a sound up. The universe must hate him, because besides the awful lisp he couldn’t get rid of, he also got made fun of in kindergarten for having ears like Mickey Mouse, sticking straight out, too big for his head. He learned to use them to his advantage when he shut his mouth for a few years, to hear secrets, to collect information, to put a song together from just a few strikes of the piano keys. He could listen to music for hours on end, placing the notes into movies, rearranging them for concerts. He used to enjoy nat sound, crickets in the grass, bells in the distance, a crowd cheering at a Hawks game. Research, he called it. A mixer doesn’t need to speak with sad little S’s, or Th’s instead of Z’s. A good mixer _listens_ , picks the world apart, wavelength by wavelength, to feel the blend.

But day after day in the same bed, in the same room, with the same faces coming in and out to say hello, has gotten stale. Zayn doesn’t worry about his S’s or Th’s anymore, and he rather likes the sound of his voice, when he’s singing or laughing in a bar or cheering at Hawks game. He doesn’t want to sit still. It all makes his ears hurt. The sounds blend together. It’s white noise. It’s stagnant.

It’s getting harder to keep his spirits up.

 

***

 

“I can feel it,” Zayn groans, waking up two days later, to fingers tapping at his toes.

He’s not in the mood for Harry’s questions yet, because he’s gotten really sick and tired of only being able to sleep on his back, his chin tucked into his shoulder. He remembers sleeping on his stomach fondly, his arms under a pillow, ankles crossed. Or better yet, sleeping on his side, a leg hitched up, around a hot boy with a slick cock, ready to ravish him first thing. _I used to fuck around, and it was amazing. Feels like ages ago now._

It could lead to dangerous territory, Zayn thinking long and hard about getting fucked long and hard, especially since he’s hardly ever alone in this godforsaken place. Harry Styles, with his perfectly round ass and bright eyes could walk in at any moment, with his hands on hips, and Zayn could probably jizz right then and there. _Can I jizz at all, with a catheter shoved up my dick?_

“Shit,” Zayn mumbles to himself, rubbing his eyes, his toes knocking into dancing fingers. “I said I could feel it, Harry. No tingling, no numbness.”

“You said ‘shit,’” a voice gasps dramatically.

Zayn’s eyes fly open as he gives himself whiplash. He leans to his right, his neck aching already from the swift movement. Down by his feet stands a little girl in a purple nightgown, her brown hair in pigtails, her eyes wide.

“Excuse you, little lady,” Harry walks in, hands on his hips, staring her down. “Since when are you allowed in other patient rooms?”

“Nurse Gen said someone had a robot leg on this floor,” she rubs her eye, stepping away from Zayn’s bed, pulling a miniature IV stand with her, a stuffed monkey hanging off the top of it alongside her drip bag. Zayn hadn’t noticed it. “I just wanted to see.”

“It’s not nice to say someone has a robot leg.”

“Nurse Gen said it first!”

“Doesn’t matter.”

“Does so!”

“Come on, Bex,” Harry can’t help but smile, holding his hand out. “You need to be in bed.”

“I hate that bed,” she pouts, about to cry, walking towards him anyways. “I don’t want to.”

Zayn, at this point totally mute to the entire conversation and mortified at his own early morning thoughts, holds a hand out to stop Harry. He could listen to him talk to little kids all day, now that he’s witnessed it firsthand. He could listen to Harry say the alphabet, backwards and forwards for weeks at time, he thinks. But it’s not the time for either of those things.

“Bex, huh. Nice name,” Zayn props himself up on his good elbow, since Harry hasn’t raised the upper half of his bed like he normally does when he wakes up.

“I guess.”

“Mine’s Zayn.”

“Yours is alright,” she shrugs, saying the most honest thing Zayn’s ever heard. He laughs so hard, she startles slightly, before laughing along with him. Kids love being funny, can’t help but revel in making adults laugh. Zayn composes himself and holds his hand out, for her to come shake it. He tries not to wince at the sharp squeal of the IV stand’s left wheel.

She grips his fingers, so he doesn’t let her hand go and instead holds onto it.

“My leg is pretty gross, huh.”

“My scar is gross,” she points to her side, challenging him. “I got a new kidney.”

“New kidneys are cool.”

“Are you a robot?”

“No, are you?”

“No,” she laughs at the ridiculous question, warming up to him. “Do I look like one?”

“Never met a robot before,” Zayn shrugs. “You could be.”

“I’m not,” Bex rolls her eyes and swings her arm a little, still not letting go of Zayn’s hand.

“Alright you two,” Harry finally steps forward, tugging his stethoscope from around his neck like he’s about to lead her away. His eyes shine like they did on that street corner weeks ago, when Zayn could hardly contain himself from wanting to kiss him.

“I don’t want to go back to bed,” Bex whines, her fingers digging into Zayn’s harder. “It’s so _boring_ in there. There’s no one to _talk_ to. Tell Nurse Harry to let me stay.”

“Nurse Harry, can Bex stay? Just while you check up on me?” Zayn pouts, his bottom lip popping out. Bex sees and tries to match, her face contorting into the most pathetic and adorable expression Zayn’s ever seen.

Harry doesn’t say anything, but he rolls his eyes and begins his assessment. As Zayn leans into him, his cheek against Harry’s warm chest as he inhales and exhales for Harry to listen to his lungs, he crosses his eyes at Bex. She giggles harder than ever.

She then watches, in a trance, when Harry wraps his hand around Zayn’s left ankle and asks, yet again, if Zayn can feel it. His skin still isn’t blue, he can still move his toes, and the tiny prick Harry applies to the center of his arch does, in fact, hurt. It’s a good sign.

“Zayn and his robot leg are doing just fine today, little lady,” Harry reaches for her, picking her up with one arm gingerly, the IV stand following like a dog on a leash. “So it’s back to bed for you.”

Zayn watches, amused, as she initially puts up a fight, until suddenly he feels it: the initial twinge, the first jolt of shooting pain that starts in his gut. It’s like a lightning bolt, a strike of it, ripping through his muscles. His stomach clenches, his arm tenses, it’s a lot at once.

“Fine,” Bex finally sighs, giving up as Harry finishes up writing in Zayn’s chart. “Can I hold your stuff? I wanna practice holding it, so when I’m a nurse, I’ll know how.”

“Sure,” Harry hands over his stethoscope, penlight, and pen. “Say bye to Zayn.”

“Bye Zayn!” she quips, waving Harry’s stethoscope towards him.

“Bye Bex,” Zayn says with a wince, his face contorted. He needs something, a pill, a shot, a hit over the head with a hammer to knock him the fuck out. It’s going to be a hard day. _Everything hurts._

Harry starts to walk out of the room holding Bex in his right arm, when he steals a sweet glance at Zayn. His face falls when he sees Zayn’s expression, the quick huffs of breath he can’t hold in. Their eyes lock. _It hurts. I never should’ve taken for granted when it didn’t. I should’ve cherished the shock, huh. Come back soon. Please?_

“I’ll be back in five minutes,” Harry says, holding his hand up even. “I got you.”

Zayn closes his eyes as the door snaps shut and focuses on his breathing. He listens to his own exhales, counting them, until Harry can fix him all over again.

 

***

 

That night as the sun sets, Zayn knows he doesn’t have much longer with Harry before Gen arrives for her shift. And Gen is great, Zayn nods to himself, but she’s not Harry. They had tried his range of motion exercises earlier in the day, even took off the sling of his right arm for Harry to move it slightly, but the pain kept making him tense up.

So they’re back at it, Harry holding Zayn’s left forearm, pulling parallel to the floor first, then up over his head, and slightly behind his back. _Who says I even need my rotator cuffs to be strong. This fucking sucks._

Zayn keeps his mouth shut as Harry moves his arm in a circle. His wrist didn’t exactly shatter from the accident, but he has pins inside there as well, probably fucked up his wrist tattoo and everything. _It looked nice while it lasted, I guess._

“Do you ever hate this kind of thing?” Zayn grunts, as Harry purposefully hyper-extends his arm for two seconds.

“What kind of thing?”

“Touching people. Moving pillows. Taking piss bags to the toilet.”

“This is my job.”

“That doesn’t answer the question.”

“No, Zayn,” Harry lets his arm go, to walk around the bed to his other arm. “I don’t ever hate my job.”

“Liar.”

“I’m not lying,” Harry shrugs. “Nurses… well, nurses are lucky in that we get to choose the type of work we do.”

“Oh.”

Zayn closes his eyes, since his right arm always aches more than his left. His clavicle refuses to heal. Harry tends to breathe a little quicker whenever they do this, even though he’s not the one actually working his muscles. Zayn thinks maybe Harry does it so they match, so Zayn doesn’t feel like a plastic doll, his arm and leg joints being moved around haphazardly by a little kid, before being flung into a closet. Harry makes it feel like a joint effort, which is nice. Zayn listens to his breathing as Harry moves his arm in a slow, contained circle, sure that the conversation is over.

“I tried working with elderly people for awhile,” Harry offers, continuing. “I thought since I love my grandparents and the neighbors up and down my parents’ block, that I could help people in that time of their lives.”

Zayn winces as Harry presses slightly on his shoulder blade, his right side sinking into the bed.

“But it wasn’t for me. It was… too much. People without families, spouses sick and dying in the same room, the final days of the last person in a family tree.”

“Shit,” Zayn winces, never having thought about it before.

“I tried pediatrics, as well. I had… experience with it. Sort of. So I worked in the children’s cancer wing for a few months, because again, I figured I like little kids. I understand them. They like me. I could convince them to eat their peas and give them Band-Aids when they cried.”

“Like how you are with Bex,” Zayn smiles, eyes still closed.

“But… I quickly realized that watching helpless children and sick babies die every single day wasn’t for me either.”

Zayn bites his lip, unsure if he should change the subject. He’s not even a nurse, hasn’t seen half the shit Harry has, and he’s already uncomfortable. _Harry’s strong as hell. And I cry when my leg hurts._

“So I enjoy working with people after life-saving surgeries and solid organ transplants, who need help or someone to talk to. I can work with elderly people here, or even little kids like Bex with her new kidney, because I know that more often than not, they’ll go home eventually. They’ll get better,” Harry says with finality to it, gently placing Zayn’s arm back into his lap to get the sling back on.

“You’re good at it,” Zayn opens his eyes so he can see Harry’s face again. He’s missed it for the few minutes he only used his ears.

“Thanks.”

Zayn knows he’s not supposed to, that the line in the sand is still there, but he reaches for Harry’s hand before he can start jotting into his chart. He laces their fingers together, their skin tones almost poetic side by side. They both let it happen, both watch how their hands look together, before Harry slowly lets him go and backs away.

“I’ll tell Gen to help you with your bath,” Harry gives him a small smile, before leaving the room.

 

***

 

Zayn begins to dream of odd things, stupid things to the average person. And yet every dream becomes an oasis, full of stuff he can’t believe he ever took for granted out there in the real world.

A brisk walk to the 7-Eleven two blocks over from his apartment, for a Coke and a Snickers. Just Zayn, by himself, listening to the wind and children on a playground, the sun burning his neck. _Walking._

The sensation of his bare feet firmly on the floor, a soft shag rug between his toes. Standing up with his full weight supported by his legs. Sitting with his legs crossed. His own bed. His kitchen with the wobbly cabinets. Stretching in the morning, both of his arms up and over his head. Outside. The wind. His booth at work, headphones snapped over his ears, the world nothing but a sound board and a cup of steaming coffee, Robert by his side, tapping his leg.

Sex. Hot, passionate, dirty sex. A hand around himself in his own shower. Oh god, _a shower,_ with hot water and shampoo and his voice reverbing against the tiles, as he sings that old Mario song he loves so much.

He has a distinct dream wherein he takes a long drive through the Georgia back woods, the leaves changing like it’s November. He stops near a lake and walks to it, tosses a pebble with his left hand because he can. And then, mercifully, deliciously, he unzips his jeans and takes a piss against a tree all by himself.

Whenever he wakes up from a dream and realizes another sliver of life that he can’t have for awhile, he tries to shove the thought away.

_I really miss taking a piss, though. I really, really do._

 

***

 

By his third week, Zayn’s had enough. He can sense his mood becoming darker and darker, with each passing minute. He’s practically scratching at his own skin, disgusted with himself, his body, the relentless pain. He realized the night before, that if he were dying, if he was sick or on the verge of impending doom, maybe it would be easier. Maybe he could focus on getting better so he could go live his life, escape the confines of a hospital room to soak up each new day like it’s his last.

But he’s not dying. He’s not even close, he never was. His head is fine, his heart is fine, everything functions except one fucking leg and one fucking arm. Just a few bones that aren’t healing fast enough, keeping him immobile, alone, anxious, _stuck_ , in disgusting stale air.

Harry tries to talk to him, asks him questions about his life and work and hobbies, but Zayn can’t do pleasantries anymore. Not when he truly, actively can help daydreaming about something as simple as the wind.  
“Can’t we open a window?” Zayn says with gritted teeth, as Harry cleans the screws in his leg.

“The windows don’t open.”

“Of course they don’t,” Zayn covers his face with a pillow momentarily. “Of course they fucking don’t.

“You said the f word!” Bex screeches, as she comes bounding into the room, her little IV stand squeaking alongside her. Zayn grits his teeth at it.

Zayn cracks an eye open to see her skipping, the lucky little shit, towards Harry. _I used to skip. Or like, I guess I never skipped, I don’t skip on a daily basis. But I fucking could if I wanted to. I had the fucking option, didn’t I?_

“Who said you could come in here? Did you knock?” Harry quirks an eyebrow at her, gesturing to Zayn.

“Sorry Zayny,” she shrugs.

Zayn closes his eyes again. The cool iodine on his legs, the swiping of it back and forth by Harry’s gentle gloved hands, drives him nuts. It’s like a fresh scab he wants to itch, and an open gaping wound, all at once. His brain doesn’t know what to do with the sensation, if it’s the relief of itching it, or disgust at the sores. It’s like being tickled and hating it, while also laughing, trying to embrace the powerlessness.

“You should go back to your room,” Harry tells her. She starts babbling about her dad, ignoring Harry’s request entirely.

Zayn breathes as Harry wraps up his supplies, wrinkling the plastic, snapping his latex gloves off, the clock behind him ticking, Bex’s metal IV stand creaking as she moves from side to side.

And then it bursts out of him like one of those old practical joke cans, a surprise and a jump, the plastic green snake springing out of him before he can stop it.

“Jesus _Chris_ t, do you have to snap your gloves so hard? And why don’t any of the fucking IV stands in this place work right? Does _every_ single one of them insist on being loud?” Zayn screams, his fingers pulling his hair until tears form in his eyes.

Harry just stares at him. He blinks a few times, as Bex physically moves to stand behind him. Her lip trembles. She’s scared.

“I…” Zayn shakes his head, in disbelief.

“Bex, let’s go take your medicine,” Harry says gently, his voice soft and complacent. She’s gone before Zayn can say he’s sorry. Harry doesn’t even look at him as he follows her, not like he usually does, when he smiles at Zayn or pretends to look at his monitors, when really he just wants to see Zayn’s face.

The next morning, when Dr. Foreman arrives, Trisha sits at Zayn’s side and holds his hand. Apparently Zayn will begin taking an antidepressant. _It’s pretty standard, for someone to take something when in this position, Zayn. I’m sure you’ll feel much better with it,_ and _once we have your last surgery in a few days. Once you can move more, hmmm?_

Zayn tries to eat a cookie afterwards, when he’s alone again, a peanut butter one Harry left him. But he can’t swallow it.

 

***

 

Trisha comes through at the last second, as always. She slips into Zayn’s hospital room right before the nurses should be kicking everyone out, exhausted from work, but smiling. She kisses his cheek and smooths his hair, comments that she’ll help him shave again soon.

She then hands over one of the walkie-talkies Zayn told her was in the attic, under the Halloween decorations, behind the karaoke machine they never use.

Zayn clicks it on first thing, to channel two, and holds it against his face. She made sure to hit his room second, bless her.

“Hey little lady,” he says in a low voice, coming in soft. “You still awake?”

“Hi Zayny,” Bex says with a screech, clearly haven forgotten his angry outburst from earlier that day. “This is so awesome. We can talk all the time now!”

“You like it?”

“Miss Trisha said I get to keep these when we leave the hospital. Is that true? Am I allowed?”

“Sure, babe. All yours.”

“Oh _sweet!”_ Bex cheers, probably waking up half the floor. “I can’t _wait_ to show my brother, he’ll be so excited. I just can’t wait. When my dad brings him, you should meet him and show him your screws. Your leg is so _gross_ , Zayny. It’s just _nasty_. But so cool!”

Zayn winks at his mother as she slips out of the room. He ends up holding the walkie-talkie against his lips with his eyes closed, to listen to Bex babble about nonsense until Gen shuffles in with a hand on her hip.

“You two, I swear...” she warns.

Zayn can hear Bex laughing through the speaker, but also clear down the hall. _She’s a good kid._

 

***

 

He knows he doesn’t deserve Harry’s sympathy, or extra care and attention. He also knows, because it’s a Friday that it’s Harry’s day off, so he can’t expect anything at all. Gen told him they get three days off most weeks, to combat the relentless and exhausting twelve-hour shifts they put in. _It ain’t exactly waitressing for twelve hours, love. We need the time to decompress._

But Harry shows up anyways, much to Zayn’s surprise.

“Hey,” Zayn smiles at him, setting the magazine he was flipping through back into his lap. It features a bunch of cars and motorcycles Zayn couldn’t care less for, but he had to stop lying around in the silence. His mother said it was beginning to worry her, and the night before when he asked Gen to bring Bex to visit, she told him his eyes looked “a little dead.”

“Hey,” Harry smiles in return, sitting in the chair to Zayn’s left.

Zayn can’t help it, the way his eyes travel up and over each part of Harry. When he’s not in scrubs, which do absolutely nothing for his shape, his shoulders broaden, his feet longer, his knees bare from the rips in his jeans. _You’re so beautiful it almost hurts. And everything already hurts._

“You didn’t have to come.”

“I know.”

“Don’t you have something fun to do on your day off? Something exciting?”

Harry thinks it over, as he starts to twist the ring on his middle finger around and around. It’s something he never wears while working. Zayn wants to inspect it up close.

“No, I thought I should come in today,” Harry ends up sighing.

“Couldn’t wait to see me?” Zayn tries to joke, even though their interactions have been stilted since his angry outburst. The meds Dr. Foreman put him on have helped, a bit. Zayn just feels mostly resigned to it now, this fate he’s set up for himself, after getting in a fight with a Honda. He just focuses on his surgery. _Once it’s just a cast, once I can move around, it’ll all be better. I’ll be on my way back._

“You know, the world doesn’t revolve around just you, Zayn,” Harry smiles.

“Clearly,” Zayn gestures to his stump of a leg.

“Bex is getting released today, yeah?”

“Yeah, I’m pretty bummed, actually. She’s taking my walkie-talkies.”

“The staff sure won’t miss those,” Harry smiles. “But yeah, I figured I should see her off.”

Zayn itches to grab Harry’s hand, to touch him somehow. But he’s not supposed to.

“So her kidney’s all good, then?”

“Her kidney is perfect,” Harry grins, absolutely ecstatic. “She needed it, too. She really needed it. A few more weeks without the transplant, and…”

He leaves it hanging in the air, what would’ve happened to Bex without her new organ. Zayn appreciates it, the fact that Harry doesn’t let on to the severity of it. Zayn hasn’t known Bex long, but he wouldn’t want to live in a world without her. _I like that you spare my feelings while also never hiding anything from me. I like you._

“I also thought,” Harry sits up straighter, moving the chair closer to Zayn’s bed, “that it would be nice to see you before your surgery.”

“Me, huh.”

“Yeah.”

“Well, I’m glad you’re here. Even if it’s not totally for me. Even if I’ve been an asshole lately, and you probably should leave me to stew on my own.”

“You haven’t been an asshole.”

“Yes I have.”

“You’re healing, Zayn,” Harry says in annoyance. “I told you. Your bones are literally trying to fuse back together. Your leg is being pulled and weighted, over and over, by this thing. That _hurts_. You’re allowed to feel angry or upset, when stuck in a bed, in pain, while the rest of you fixes itself.”

“Why do you always explain everything so well? How do you always make me feel better?” Zayn can’t help but whisper, his head hitting the pillow. He hasn’t been given any medicine to make him drowsy yet, they haven’t begun the surgery prep, but suddenly he’s tired. Suddenly Harry being there makes every muscle group relax.

“It’s my job.”

“No,” Zayn yawns. “It’s _you._ ”

It’s another surprise when Harry reaches for Zayn’s hand, to hold the fingers sticking out of his cast. Zayn watches the movement, Harry’s thumb rubbing the skin of his knuckles back and forth.

“I can’t wait to take you out,” Harry smiles towards the floor. “Once you’re better.”

“No fair. I asked _you_ out, didn’t I?”

Harry laughs, his big squawk of a laugh that Zayn swears he’ll record out in the field someday, to use in some comedic scene, in whatever movie he eventually mixes. Harry squeezes his fingers one last time, before standing up.

“I’ll bring Bex in to say bye, before she goes?”

“Yes, please.”

Harry makes as if he’s leaving, but changes his mind and instead leans down to kiss Zayn’s forehead. It’s quick, and he doesn’t say anything afterwards, definitely doesn’t give a _good luck with your surgery babe, I’ll be here when you wake up._ But Zayn feels it all the same.

 

***

 

Zayn giggles so hard over his dinner that night, his mom feels his forehead to make sure he doesn’t have a fever. _It’s just the Demerol, little momma. All good, see? Just getting that bubble gum in my veins, no big deal._

“Eat your peas,” Harry shakes his head with a laugh, to his right. _You really were here when I woke up. I’m so happy. You always do what you say you’re gonna do, and I really like that._

But Zayn can’t eat his peas because all he wants to do is laugh about nothing and stare at his leg. The traction device is gone. The pins and screws, the open wounds, the pulleys and straps holding it up and above his waist, gone. The room feels lighter without the huge contraption surrounding his bed frame. He can’t see the skin of his leg, the disgusting yellow coloring it adopted after so many weeks of iodine. It’s all gone.

It’s just Zayn’s leg, there on the bed, in a cast. It’s massive, thick, from his upper thigh down to his ankle, and he’s sure eventually it’ll be uncomfortable. But for now, he can feel the bed underneath it, the sweet weight of it the same as his other leg. Side by side. Together. He wiggles all his toes for fun, just to see them being a team again. A foot next to a foot. Ten toes.

_Yeah. This is good. A cast I can do. A cast means crutches and standing and walking eventually, and feet on the floor. I like this cast. Good cast._

He looks up to see Harry watching him pet his cast like a puppy. Harry smiles at him, endeared, relaxed, his black jacket settled on his shoulders so beautifully, Zayn almost says so. But his mom’s in the room, and there’s that dumb line still in the sand, and Bex’s goodbye card on his table staring at him. It’s not the right time.

_I’m gonna kiss you so hard when I’m out of here, you’ll be the one they’ll worry about stepping into traffic. It’s gonna be good, babe. Just you wait and see._

Zayn winks at Harry and wiggles his eyebrows suggestively.

“Oh Jesus,” Harry buries his face in his hands, smiling.

Trisha snorts so hard, the people on the other end of the hall probably hear it.

 

***

 

Zayn wakes up the next day with a renewed sense of purpose. It’s like the clouds have shifted overhead. He laughs to himself, still slightly doped up, and thinks about the music he’d put under this type of scene, as he stretches in his hospital bed with a small smile. _I’d make it optimistic and uplifting, just slightly louder than the nat sound, to really hit home how happy I feel._

His mom and Dr. Foreman say he looks healthier than he has in awhile, even though it’s the day after major surgery. Seena the CNA who comes to change his urine doesn’t look as weirded out by him. He actually says hello to her, to be pleasant this morning, instead of sullen and mute like he’s been lately. She blushes so hard, Zayn almost tells her not to drop his piss onto the floor.

_Still got it, Malik._

“Well aren’t you a sight for sore eyes,” Harry waltzes in later clicking his pen, in Spongebob scrubs. He sees Zayn eyeing them and shrugs, handing him a cup of ice because he’s a beautiful soul. “I have a kid in this week. He likes them.”

“You’re cute,” Zayn smiles, head lolling on his pillow, a chunk of ice between his teeth.

“You say that now,” Harry pretends to be serious. “We’ll see how you feel once you’re up.”

“So I can get up now? Let’s do it, let’s go,” Zayn nods fiercely. He looks down at his legs again, side by side, and wants more than anything to put his feet on the floor. Finally.

“Not today,” Harry breaks it to him.

“Why?”

“You’re still coming down from the meds, babe,” Harry says as he secures the blood pressure cuff around Zayn’s right arm. They both hear the _babe_ and swiftly ignore Harry’s entire body tensing up. Zayn smiles, though. _I like when you call me babe. By all means, continue doing it._

Zayn barrels on.

“So tomorrow then? I can get up? Maybe we can go outside?”

“Not tomorrow. But the next day. I don’t want your arm in a sling when we do it. I want you to have some motion in your shoulder, in case you need it. And no outside, not until you’re discharged.”

“Hmmm, fine,” Zayn leans back again, smiling. “Can I take a piss then? Please? Can we remove this thing from my dick, _please?”_

Harry laughs and shoves the thermometer in Zayn’s ear.

“You can ask Dr. Foreman.”

“Not tomorrow, but the next day,” Zayn nods. “It’ll be good.”

_It better be._

 

***

 

Their first date isn’t so much a date, as it is a culmination of every day that felt like a date beforehand. It was never sexy, the days Harry spent poking Zayn’s feet or cleaning his stitches or forcing him to eat hospital food. But together, as a whole, all those days added up equaled sweet looks, deep conversations, and hand holding even when Zayn knew they shouldn’t have. It’s like their first date is their fiftieth, and it’s about damn time they make the most of it.

So when Harry shows up at Zayn’s door with a bottle of wine, Zayn can’t exactly blame himself for jumping his bones.

“Hello to you too,” Harry says against his mouth, Zayn pulling him by the lapels inside the door.

Zayn grabs for the wine without disconnecting their mouths, and unceremoniously tosses it on the couch. Then he scrambles to remove Harry’s jacket, his hands working in overdrive, his tongue sliding across Harry’s bottom lip.

“Hey,” Zayn finally speaks, Harry’s thumbs digging into his hipbones. “I’m glad you’re here.”

“Me too.”

Zayn lowers himself right there in the front entryway, kissing down Harry’s chest, over his shirt, to his belt buckle. When his knees hit the floor, it doesn’t even hurt. He can bend both legs, cross his ankles, ice skate if he wanted to, blow Harry over and over, just like this.

“I’m gonna,” Zayn nods, breath huffing against Harry’s hardening cock.

“You gonna show me how you do it?” Harry whispers, thumb rubbing Zayn’s cheekbone.

Zayn nods.

Harry nudges him back so he can undo his jeans, the rings on his fingers flashing in the low light of Zayn’s place, and in no time at all, is feeding his cock into Zayn’s waiting mouth. He’s full before he can comprehend it, Harry bumping against the back of his throat roughly.

“Look so pretty,” Harry huffs. “You’re doing so good, babe.”

_Fuck, I love when you call me babe. I loved it in the hospital and I love it now with you down my throat._

“Can’t wait to get my hands on you,” Harry pumps his hips forward. “I’m gonna open you up, yeah?”

Zayn groans, his fingers digging into Harry’s ass now. _Go faster. You can go as fast as you want. I like being on my knees like this, I like knowing that I’m able to. Bend me over later, babe. My legs work. Everything’s fixed now._

“I’m gonna come in your pretty mouth,” Harry breathes, faster.

_Do it._

“You gonna swallow?”

_Yes._

“Can you feel this?” Harry tilts Zayn’s chin back, to slide in further, gagging him.

_I can feel everything. I’m here. I’m here._

“Fuck, babe,” Harry grunts, his legs shaking, as he comes in Zayn’s mouth. It’s hot and rushed, Zayn’s knees don’t even ache as he groans around Harry, the thick spurts enveloping him. He coughs on it as Harry wipes at his eyes. They sound so beautiful together, giggling and whispering praise, Zayn wiping at his mouth, Harry giving his thanks.

Harry reaches his hand out, like he’s going to help Zayn stand up again. Zayn doesn’t need his help though, since his leg works just fine, but he appreciates it. He’s about to decline Harry’s hand, when instead Harry pushes at him. Hard.

Zayn falls back, as his left leg breaks into pieces. His kneecap shatters, like a piece of paper crumpled up into a ball, his shin collapses, his femur suddenly an old accordion. Zayn falls onto his back, the pain shooting up his entire body, blood everywhere, as the gnashes across his leg widen. There’s blood in his mouth like it was after the car hit him, when he bit his tongue, and Harry stands above him with wide eyes. There’s so much blood, coursing over his floor, ruining Harry’s boots.

Blood everywhere, it smells like a hospital, he can’t breathe. Zayn can’t speak as Harry shakes his head.

“I didn’t mean to open you up this way, I swear,” Harry admits with a shrug.

_I don’t know if I believe you._

Zayn wakes up drenched in sweat, with his arm aching and his leg on fire.

 

***

 

Genevieve, the saint that she is, removes the catheter. She doesn’t explicitly say _so Harry won’t have to,_ but Zayn hears it all the same. It’s one of the more unpleasant sensations Zayn’s had in his young life, but be prays that one day, this entire hospital stay will blend into one big “event” and he won’t have to think about any of the tiny pieces once he’s healed in ten months’ time.

Before Harry arrives, she makes sure Zayn has his medicine and his circulation is good. She helps him take the sling off and put on a black t-shirt and a pair of hospital boxers that are wide enough at the legs to accommodate his cast. She officially removes his IV, his kidney well enough to be without the meds, the needle sliding out of the back of his hand a little too slowly for Zayn’s liking. It’s still like his birthday, though. She goes through all the morning check ups Harry normally does, with a final wink, and then shuffles out the door.

Trisha wanted to be there for Zayn’s big day, but he insisted she go to work. And in all honesty, he just wants it to be with Harry. To show Harry, that he’s healing. He’s almost there. Only a few more days of this place, this room, and then he can go home. They can go on their date soon.

Harry, in his bright red scrubs, enters the room already smiling. He must’ve seen Zayn’s chart. He must know.

“You’re practically salivating,” Harry muses, crossing to Zayn’s bed, taking in the fact that Zayn’s in real clothes.

“I want to stand up,” Zayn insists. “Let’s do it.”

“Alright Flash, easy does it.”

Harry plants himself next to Zayn’s bed, like a linebacker, one foot slightly in front of the other. Zayn almost laughs. But he reaches for Harry, to grip one of his forearms with his weak right arm, and shifts. Dr. Foreman had explained how this would work, when he was ready. He hasn’t had true weight on his feet, or his right leg, in weeks. _You’ll be weak, Zayn. Expect that. Absolutely no pressure on your left leg. Just get used to being upright. Try not to disrupt your collarbone, limit all motion. Use Harry. That’s why he’s there._

“I got you,” Harry whispers, helping Zayn swing his legs around.

“I know.”

Every time Zayn’s ever gotten out of bed in the morning, every step he’s taken towards the bathroom to brush his teeth, or to make coffee; every stretch, every hurried morning he’s thrown on clothes to go for a walk, he’s taken for granted. He never realized what a  luxury it is, to have the independence to take care of yourself in even the most basic of ways. He knows it then, because now, today, as he tries to get out of bed, it’s too hard. _It hurts._

“You’re going feel all the blood rush to your feet,” Harry explains, voice level. “Your left leg is dead weight for now. Your right leg has lost all muscle tone and needs to get used to this again.”

“Okay,” Zayn winces, as Harry grips his feet, to plant them on the floor.

“Move your toes. Feel the tiles. It’s cold, right?”

“It’s cold,” Zayn repeats, nodding. The chill travels from his feet all the way to his face, the blood settling. His hips sit at the edge of the bed now, his body no longer bent at a ninety degree angle, but wider, extended, like he’s about to push up off the bed like he’s done a million mornings before. _It hurts._

“This is why we did those exercises to your good leg. To remind your body how to work, yeah? So that’s what we’re gonna do,” Harry nods, face level with Zayn’s. “We’re gonna teach it how to stand up again.”

“I know how to stand up.”

“I know you do,” Harry nods as Zayn stares at him firmly. _Please don’t talk to me like a child. I know how to do this. I can take care of myself, I know I can. I can do it._

Harry grips Zayn around the waist right as Zayn throws his left arm around Harry’s shoulders. _I can do it._ Harry must try not to help him too much, but Zayn knows as he starts to stand on his right leg, that it’s not all his doing. There’s no way he could hold himself up like this, after weeks of being in a bed, his right arm held tight and close to his chest, afraid to move it. All of his organs shift, his poor kidneys jolting in pain, his insides not used to gravity anymore.

But then he’s standing, his right foot firmly on the ground, arm gripping onto Harry for dear life. He tries to rest all his weight onto his one good leg, but it fucking hurts. It’s like his right leg is fully of jelly or mush, his bones surrounded by nothing by useless, weak, pathetic dead skin.

“You’re doing it, Zayn. Feel that? Dig your heel into the floor,” Harry rushes out, as Zayn’s entire body shakes from the effort.

Zayn grits his teeth and tries, he tries so hard to stay standing.

“Fuck, it hurts,” Zayn whispers, ashamed.

“I know. You’re doing great, babe. This is perfect. This is exactly what you’re supposed to do for the first time,” Harry says into Zayn’s ear like a secret, like he’s proud.

But it’s like Zayn is two people in that moment. His entire body hurts, every cell screaming at him to make it stop, to let up. He starts to feel Harry lowering him again, steady as a drum, the muscles in his back and legs strong as ever, like a man _should_ feel. Zayn shakes his head violently. _Don’t. Don’t. Don’t. It hurts but I can’t sit down. Not yet._

“No, I want to go into the bathroom.”

“You can’t walk yet.”

“I don’t care, I want to go in there. I want to take a piss like a fucking person, Harry. I want to wash my hands in a sink and fix my hair in a mirror. By myself.”

“Zayn,” Harry tries to lower him again, his arms full wrapped around Zayn’s torso now. They might look like they’re slow dancing, Harry holding Zayn close like it’s their first date, under a canopy, maybe with that song Zayn heard in a record store once, when he stood in the corner with headphones on and listened to it for literally two hours straight, deciding what kind of movie he’d put it in.

“Please don’t put me down,” Zayn begs. “Please let me do this. I need to.”

Zayn has a feeling it goes against every instruction Harry’s ever had as a nursing student, but he does it. He nods into Zayn’s neck and tightens his hold around him, lifting him like Zayn weighs nothing. He walks him the few feet from the bed to the bathroom, and somehow, miraculously, maneuvers them so Zayn’s back is against Harry’s chest.

He’s so weak as he “stands” there gripping the sink, the blood in his legs screaming with every pump of his heart. He looks up and realizes the mirror distorts his face somehow. Or maybe that’s just what he looks like now, his cheeks hollow, his skin pallid, his hair a mess. _Well aren’t you a catch._

Harry shifts them slightly so Zayn can do as he asked. Zayn Malik pees for the first time in almost a month, into a toilet, without any help beyond Harry’s arms around his chest. One of the most basic sensations a human can have takes all of the energy Zayn has ever stored. Harry tucks his face into the back of Zayn’s neck and doesn’t watch, pretends like he’s not there, like Zayn’s alone in his bathroom back home, easy as anything, starting his day. Zayn’s lip shakes and he hates himself for needing this normalcy.

Harry must be exhausted, holding a full-grown man up for this long, barely any of Zayn’s weight on his one good leg. It’s still wobbling like crazy, but he did it. He peed. It’s the most depressing victory Zayn’s ever accomplished.

Zayn washes his hands as quickly as he can, the pain getting to be too much as it shoots down his leg and up his chest. The blood rushed to his feet too fast, he can feel them swelling up.

He doesn’t try to fix his hair at all.

Harry holds him tighter and backs them out of the bathroom, quickly shuffling his feet to get Zayn back to his bed. It’s another awkward maneuver, until Zayn finally lands on his ass, his hands in fists at the effort.

They don’t speak as Harry swings both of Zayn’s legs up onto the mattress and tucks the covers around him. Harry pretends not to notice Zayn’s flushed face, the sweat dripping down his temples, as he scribbles into his chart.

_I bet he’s writing that I failed. I bet he’s thinking about the babies with cancer, the war vets with bad lungs, the car crash victims with their intestines hanging out, and scoffing at me. I’m crying over one leg. One fucking bone. One month of being in bed._

“It’s all about perspective,” Harry says steadily, clicking his pen, reading Zayn’s mind again. “You have to crawl before you can run, right?”

Zayn just nods.

“And what you just did was huge. You did exactly what you wanted to do today, right?”

“Yeah.”

“I know… Like, I know what sometimes helps other patients, is to really push. I can help you, if you’d like. To push yourself.”

“Yeah, okay,” Zayn shrugs, not completely paying attention. Honestly, he just wants Harry to call another nurse in so he can take half the pain pill he’s allowed today.

“Okay,” Harry nods, unsure of if he should stay. He grips at the stethoscope around his neck nervously, the plastic of it sliding between his long fingers.

“Thanks for your help,” Zayn looks to the window, needing to be alone. He’d like to listen to the wind for a while, but the windows don’t open and he can’t bring himself to complain about it out loud again.

Harry does it quickly, like he needs to do it before he regrets crossing the line. He leans in and gently grabs Zayn’s face, turning his head, to kiss him. It’s sweet, so fucking sweet, that Zayn’s almost positive it has a taste. _We taste good._

But then Harry leaves, his feet not making a sound, since he knows Zayn doesn’t like the squeaking on the tiles.

 

***

 

If Zayn expected Harry to take it easy on him, or let him rest after such a difficult task, he was sorely mistaken.

Just an hour later, Harry comes bounding into Zayn’s room with a swift clap of the hands.

“Alright,” he nods. “Round two.”

Zayn gawks at him, his phone hot between his palms from texting his mom and the guys at work, to update them on his non-progress. He wants to stand, walk, run for the hills, hike a fucking mountain. But he can’t. It’s like his body won’t cooperate yet and he’d rather be embarrassed again so soon. So he waits for Harry to explain himself. 

“Do you want to try and swing your legs over this time?” Harry steps to him expectantly.

“We’re trying again?”

“We sure are.”

“But I… I couldn’t do it, I shouldn’t… I should rest for awhile first, right?”

“That’s not how it works, babe,” Harry barrels on, determined. “You stood up. You had an hour to rest. So, round two.”

Zayn shakes his head, bewildered. They kissed earlier, with enough energy and force behind it, Zayn can still feel the tingle on his lips. He can still taste them. But Harry’s just his nurse now, as his eyes Zayn like he doesn’t have all day.

“I mean… alright then,” he shoves his phone away.

Zayn tries with all his might to move his legs off the bed on his own. He really fucking tries. Harry watches him with his hands on his hips, waiting patiently as Zayn huffs and puffs through it. But his arms are weak, as he tries to use them as leverage, and fails miserably. Eventually, after a fucking century, Harry gently grips Zayn’s ankles and moves his legs off the side of the bed.

“Move your toes. Feel the tiles. It’s cold, right?” Harry repeats himself from before, like it’s some sort of encouragement or mantra.

“Yes, Harry. I can feel the floor,” Zayn winces, his feet still heavy and useless, the blood rushing.

“Use me, that’s what I’m here for. Grab my forearms and pull yourself up.”

“I’m trying,” Zayn huffs a breath, his right leg not cooperating. It was a fucking pipe dream, when he woke up that morning and actually believed he could do this. Zayn spent a month in bed, a solid month of muscle loss, restricted motion, shriveled capillaries. The act of standing up again, of pulling himself up and off a bed, is not going to happen in under three hours. It’ll be a fucking miracle if it happens in the three _days_ he has left under this roof.

“You’re doing great,” Harry nods, fingers tightening around Zayn’s forearms, to pull him.

“No I’m not,” Zayn grunts, pissed.

“You were hit by a car. Your insides ripped to shreds. You flew through the air,” Harry grunts back, pissed in return. “You broke your leg in three places. Your arm is weak. This is how it works, Zayn. You’re doing it.”

Zayn knows what this is. It’s the tough-love act, the harsh words to make Zayn want to push back, to fight his way through it. But Zayn hates it, hates his stupid fucking leg, hates this place. He grits his teeth and tries to ignore Harry. He wants to do this without his fucking help. He doesn’t want to do this at all. _Don’t talk to me like I’m a child._

They eventually get Zayn on his feet, all of his weight resting on his right leg, wobbling even worse than before. His muscles scream in agony, as if they’re being ripped from the bone entirely, and Zayn has to suck in a breath to keep from yelling out. His entire lower half shakes, a tree caught in a storm, his fingers digging into Harry’s forearms.

“Stand, stand, stand,” Harry repeats over and over, “keep going, keep going, keep going.”

“I can’t,” Zayn’s voice wobbles just as hard as his leg.

“Yes you can.”

“I have to sit down.”

“No you don’t.”

“Harry, stop. It hurts, I can’t,” Zayn whines, his face contorted in anguish. _It’s embarrassing enough without having to say it out loud, you fucking prick._

Harry forces him to stay up for thirty more seconds, which Zayn counts as he looks up and over Harry’s shoulder at the clock on the far wall. He’d rather not see Harry’s face up close, not when he’s angry and spitting with each hiss escaping his lips. _Fuck this._

When he finally falls back onto his ass, a final breath whooshes out of him, blowing Harry’s hair away from his cheeks. Harry smiles, like it’s an accomplishment, like they just ran a marathon for charity and this sweet moment is their reward. Zayn has the vague thought that he could reach out and smack the smile right off his face.

“You’re doing so well,” Harry smiles, leaning over him, their lips close. “So well, babe.”

“I’m fucking exhausted,” Zayn turns away.

“I know. You won’t be exhausted forever. It starts to get easier, I promise.”

He hands Zayn a cup of water and tries to smile again, but Zayn ignores him.

 

***

 

An hour later, Harry pulls him up and gets him into the bathroom again. When Zayn takes a piss, he still doesn’t watch, but he doesn’t bury his face in Zayn’s neck like the first time. He must feel the anger and resentment radiating off of Zayn like fumes.

An hour after that, he holds Zayn up for even longer, as they grip each others’ forearms. Zayn hisses it over and over, how he needs to rest, but Harry presses on. _You can do this. You’re doing it, see? You’re doing great. You were hit by a car. But look at you, you’re up._ Every time Zayn says it hurts, Harry tells him he can do it. Zayn purposefully digs his fingernails into Harry’s skin, to give him a piece of it.

An hour after that, Zayn refuses to speak to Harry at all, even as he encourages him over and over again. _You can do this. We’re doing it together._

By the time Harry has his shift change with Genevieve, Zayn won’t even look at him.

 

***

 

The halls are quiet that night, when his mom gets off work to bring him a burger and fries from his favorite place on Peachtree Street. They eat over the tray across Zayn’s lap, content like all those nights when Zayn was a kid, just the two of them.

Now that he’s not actually hooked up to monitors or on an IV drip, Gen doesn’t need to assess him as much. His cast has settled, his feet aren’t as swollen, and the sounds of the hospital aren’t as depressing. There’s a light at the end of the tunnel, his discharge day, the day he meets his real physical therapist. Her name is Susan and apparently she’s a really nice lady. They don’t actually start meeting until the cast comes off in another four months, but she’ll help him get used to the crutches on his final morning.

Trisha squeezes a packet of ketchup onto his burger wrapper for him. Zayn requires about a pint of it when he eats fries, and he knows it’s just her wanting to feel useful, but he can’t help it. He watches the motion of his mother prepping his food, and something snaps.

“I can get my own ketchup,” he says in a low voice, angry again.

“I know you can, love.”

“I can do it myself,” he moves his food away from her protectively.

She eyes him for snapping at her, while seeing right through him. She’s always been able to read his emotions before he can tuck them away.

“What’s this?” she gestures to him, his body language, the scowl.

“I’m fine.”

“What’s going on? Why are you upset?”

“I’m not.”

“Zayn, can you please be honest with me? Hasn’t that always been our deal?” she moves the tray away from them both.

He wishes she hadn’t. Hospital food has started to make him dry heave. It’s Pavlovian at this point, the sound of the food cart coming down the hall enough to make him shove his head under a pillow. He’d rather starve and pretend to be asleep than try to stomach it, or worse, have a CNA hold his fork for him. _I want my fries._

She won’t let up though, her eyes boring into him fiercely.

“I’m sick of being babied and taken care of,” Zayn rubs at his thigh. “If one more person tells me how great I’m doing or ‘assists’ with some stupid, simple task, I think I’ll explode.”

“I won’t touch your ketchup ever again, I promise,” she tries to joke, grabbing his fingers. The cast won’t allow a true handhold, of course. But it’s close.

“You know what I mean,” he deadpans.

“I know.”

“It’s just… I thought the cast would make me feel better, but it’s like… I still have months left with this thing on, and then it could be years before my leg works right. _Years,_ ma. Months, and possibly years, of you pushing me around in a wheelchair, or taking me everywhere I need to go. I can’t stand, or drive, or do _anything_ , without help. Not anytime soon.”

“It’s not forever.”

“Yeah, but it’s right now. And right now, I feel useless. I want to stand, but then I try and suddenly can’t remember why. I want to climb a flight of stairs, but then want to curl up in bed so it won’t hurt. I feel angry, and then I feel like an asshole for feeling angry.”

Zayn feels his heart rate ticking up, everything fumbling out of his mouth, practically down into his lap.

“That’s natural, honey. You’re allowed to be angry at the fact that you can’t walk,” she smiles at him sadly.

Zayn reaches for the tray to bring their food closer. He really is quite grateful for the extra ketchup, so he squeezes her hand again. And he knows she’s right, because it mirrors something Harry said once. _You’re allowed to feel angry or upset, when stuck in a bed, or in pain._

But then he thinks about Harry and how angry he let himself get all day. Harry warned him, he knew it would happen. Harry, so used to helping sick people day after day, knew how Zayn would react when pushed. He knew Zayn would want to walk, and then get pissed off when he couldn’t. He knew Zayn would resent him. He knew and he still came into his room, every hour on the hour, to try again.

Zayn vows to try harder again the next day, to trust Harry’s process. _It has to get easier. It just has to. It’ll stop hurting if I tell myself I’m fine._

He also vows to be nicer to the people helping him. It’s not their fault he can’t walk, and it’s not their fault he’s angry about it.

Later, as he uses the cast on his wrist to make that sound against his beard, eyes out the window, he can’t sleep. His leg and arm ache, he feels guilty, and above all else, he wishes he could see Harry.

_Not that I should keep burdening him with this. He doesn’t need someone who can’t go for a walk in the park for another ten months. He deserves someone who won’t blow up at him for trying to help._

“You know,” Genevieve pulls him out of it, a cool hand to his forehead. He hadn’t realized she came back into the room after his mom left. “I once had a patient punch me clean in the face.”

Zayn gawks at her.

“She had recently gotten out of a pretty tough surgery. Something with her spine. It kept her on her back, completely still, for three months. She couldn’t even sit up to eat, not like how you can. We couldn’t put a TV on the ceiling, or hold a book up over her, not easily at least. So she spent weeks staring at a ceiling.”

Zayn doesn’t really want to hear about other people having it worse than him, almost positive he’ll never recover from the negative thoughts. _I already feel like an asshole as it is, for complaining about my injuries._

But Gen must know, because she shakes her head and barrels on.

“I just mean, when she could finally sit up, once we got her out of bed, it was a lot like this,” she gestures to Zayn’s crumpled body. “It was hard for her.”

“Yeah,” Zayn’s voice shakes, reverbing in the cold hospital room he’s never tried to make feel homier. He sees people walking up and down the hallways with flowers sometimes, even a painting or two, in frames and everything. Bex told him all about the curtains her mom hung up in her room, to remind her of home. But Zayn’s room is just as cold and unforgiving as the day he arrived.

Gen sees him starting to drift off into his thoughts, so she smooths his hair, to stay with her.

“One morning, as we were doing the girl’s exercises, as the pain got so bad she could barely see straight, I told her she was a beautiful girl and that she would walk in no time. She told me to ‘fuck off’ and then fast as anything, clocked me in the nose.”

Zayn’s horrified at first, imagining poor Genevieve with blood dripping down her face, seeping into the lines around her mouth, crying her eyes out after just doing her job: to make someone feel better. But then his cheeks flame red, as his thoughts dip to the act itself, to that girl who spent an entire season on her back, driven crazy, blinded by the pain. He pictures it, the anger and frustration bottled deep down, forced out and expelled through his fist. _I never thought I’d be the type of person to understand wanting to throw a punch, and now look at me._

“We never take it personally though,” Gen kisses his forehead and heads to the door. “We know how bad it hurts. We know, my love.”

Zayn nods, suddenly exhausted, his body relaxing before his brain can catch up.

“Eventually it stopped hurting and we got her up on her feet,” Gen shrugs with a smile. “And to this day, every year, that sweet girl sends me a Christmas card and calls me on my birthday.”

Zayn smiles at that, the two of them being life long friends after the storm. He’s asleep before she can even close the door.

 

***

 

Zayn dreams about Harry above him that day in the emergency room, the way he wore a halo. It was just the light of course, illuminating his hair and smile, like something out of a novel Zayn might’ve read in high school. And it was definitely the adrenaline and drugs that made Zayn see him that way, set apart from the rest of the world, enveloped in that soft glow. But it was also just Harry himself.

He wakes up the next morning after his first day trying to stand, after their kiss, with his lips tingling. It’s as if even in a REM cycle, his body knew to hold onto the sensation. None of his synapses seem to be working right, every wire is crossed, every bone feeble, his muscles unforgiving. Zayn doesn’t have that true mind/body connection anymore, his brain unsure of each sensation as Zayn tries to walk and stand. But his mouth remembers tasting Harry, and it’s nice to be able to remind himself. _I won’t be this way forever._

Harry arrives for his shift early, on a day he isn’t even supposed to be working. Zayn has the thought that it’s probably for him. Actually, he knows Harry well enough by now to know that it’s definitely for him. Zayn doesn’t even say anything when Harry slides into his room quietly, before the sun comes up.

He doesn’t say anything when Harry steps to his bed with determination, reaching for him. They meet in the middle, Zayn’s arm tucked in a sling and unable to touch Harry’s hair like he wants to. But Harry leans down and kisses the life right out of him, the line in the sand long forgotten, and Zayn thinks that even though his body is a fucking mess, it’s saying _hold tight_. So Zayn kisses Harry as hard as he can, to say _thank you_ and _I missed you_ and _you’re still here, aren’t you._

“Just trust me,” Harry whispers against Zayn’s mouth, hardly pulling away, like he can’t stand the thought of it.

“I’m trying to,” Zayn says into Harry’s bottom lip, telling it a secret. “Nothing works the way I want it to, you know?”

“You’re healing.”

Zayn almost shakes his head, until Harry grips his jaw with steady fingers, to still the movement. Zayn leans his forehead against Harry’s cheek instead, thinking of his leg and the shaking he can’t control, his anger tossed around at Harry, like it’s his fault Zayn can’t function on his own. He thinks about being one of the worst patients Harry’s ever had, petulant and rude when in agony.

“Zayn, you’re healing,” Harry repeats himself.

“I’m sorry I’m so bad at it.”

Harry leans back slightly to level him, annoyed. _You look like a cat like this,_ Zayn can’t help but smile. _Like some pissed off kitten told to stay away from the toilet paper rolls._

Harry probably reads his mind or something because when he leans back in to kiss Zayn before he has to leave, it’s the dirtiest thing Zayn’s ever experienced. It’s rougher, slick, breathless. Harry huffs a breath over Zayn’s top lip, like maybe he’s coming in his jeans and wants Zayn to know it. _Tease._

Zayn’s head spins a few minutes later, when Harry leaves the room to go be Zayn’s nurse again, the line in the sand practically carved with a chisel into the floor itself.

 

***

 

It’s like that old saying _two steps forward, one step back._ Or something. Probably.

Zayn loses most brain function, when Harry tries in vain to get him moving. He doesn’t think about old sayings, or work, or his family. He doesn’t remember the night before, when he vowed to himself to be a “good patient,” to not complain and try harder. He doesn’t even see Harry in front of him, the boy with the halo, the one who made the whole fucking hospital stay bearable. All he sees is red. _Pain. Hurt. I hate this. I can’t. Leave me the fuck alone. You._

It’s like all Zayn can process, all he can see in front of him like a real, tangible object, is the searing pain. Pain can be tricky, because on one hand it’s all in your head. Your body is nothing but the tool your brain uses to get from point A to point B. Your brain can tell it what to do, however it wants to, if you want it enough. Positive thinking, positive reinforcement, mind over matter, are all valid schools of thought. They’ve been shown to work. It’s how people get through triathlons, survive torture techniques, climb their way down a mountain after an avalanche. If you want it badly enough, you push through. You fight the pain.

But on the other hand, fuck that shit.

Pain is pain is pain. It hurts. It fucking _hurts._

When something hurts, when something is truly unbearable, our instincts kick in to tell us to run from it. To push it away. We’re no longer functioning human beings with emotions and feelings, the things that separate us from the animals. We’re like caged animals ourselves, struck down and beaten up by it, when in real pain. The kind of pain people find hard to describe. The kind of pain that has no adjective, no silver lining, no poetic justice that makes it all _worth it_ in the end.

They say suffering and empathy go hand in hand, that without pain, we wouldn’t know joy.

Zayn would like to take the people who say those types of things, and kick them in the genitals. Or better yet, he’d like to throw them in front of a moving vehicle to see how their femurs fare.

“Come on,” Nurse Harry tries again, a few hours after their second kiss, when they pretended to be different people, before slipping back into this shitty little dance they’ve been doing for weeks on end. Now they’re back to recovery, to Zayn leaning against Harry, trying with all his might to stand on one leg without assistance.

During rounds, Dr. Foreman and Susan the physical therapist arrived with his shiny new wheelchair and eventual crutches. They explained what it meant, for Zayn to leave the next day, the ways he’s still not done healing. It’s weeks in bed at home, pain pills, but not too many, that’s dangerous. It’s practicing standing, getting used to the crutches digging into his armpits, life with one leg. For now.

Harry watched it all, Zayn’s chart in his hands, with set eyes. Like he knew the first step was a literal step, the one thing he’s been tasked to do before Zayn gets discharged. To stand up. By himself.

So maybe that’s why Harry won’t back the fuck off, won’t back down, or let Zayn rest.

“I can’t,” Zayn hisses, his hips aching.

His body still isn’t used to being upright, or his legs down beneath him instead of level with his heart. It’s the second day of trying, only the second day after a month of immobility, and if Zayn were thinking clearly, maybe he’d give himself a break. But instead, he just looks down at his legs and wants to scream, his brain at odds with itself. _Why the fuck won’t you let me stand up? And for the love of God, can’t I sit down for a fucking second? I can’t do this. I have to. I need to rest. I need to fucking run._

But his arm won’t cooperate either, his clavicle on fire. Everything hurts hurts hurts, he wants it to be fucking over, and he wants to be able to fucking move. He’s a big ball of dueling forces, a man who wants to do a cartwheel, but also a man who wants to sit down with every passing second. His entire body aches.

“You can do this,” Harry hisses back, angry.

_Fuck this. Fuck this. Fuck this._

“You got hit by a car,” Harry levels with him, eyes fierce. He grips Zayn’s forearm so firmly, Zayn can feel the tips of his fingernails. “You flew through the air and broke your leg in three places. Did you think this was gonna be easy?”

“I didn’t think at all,” Zayn tries to shove Harry away with his good arm, his casted wrist. “I didn’t know you’d be like _this.”_

“Like what?”

“An asshole!”

“I’m the asshole? The one trying to help you?”

“Yes,” Zayn hisses, his wrist bumping against Harry’s sternum. Hard.

“You’re acting like a child,” Harry shoves him back. “You want to walk? Then fucking prove it.”

“I’m trying! It won’t… it won’t – nothing works, okay?” Zayn grabs at his hair, tugging it until it hurts.

“Some people get into accidents and never walk again,” Harry pokes Zayn hard in the chest. “Some people fucking die, okay? Some people still try to be pleasant, unlike _you_.”

Harry shoves Zayn again. Harder than ever. _Pain makes people do crazy things, doesn’t it._

Zayn stumbles slightly, almost falling back onto the bed, his good leg only marginally stronger than the day before when he couldn’t stop shaking. It holds him up though, even with the added pressure of Harry pushing against his battered chest. Maybe his right leg isn’t so useless after all.

“You wanna do it alone? You wanna try it without me? Fine,” Harry snarls. He backs away from Zayn, even when Zayn reaches for his arm to steady himself. He doesn’t want to need Harry, or anyone, in that moment. But he also doesn’t want to fall to the floor in a heap. Harry doesn’t reach for him in return, though. Zayn’s fingers graze his forearm as he backs up.

Harry blinks, eyes crazed, like he can’t believe what just happened. But then the anger slices through the air again, and he stomps to the door. He leaves Zayn to it, to get back into bed on his own. Hot tears threaten to fall, as Zayn huffs out a breath, his bony ass hitting the mattress too quickly.

He’s alone in his room then, his wheelchair and crutches practically staring daggers at him from the corner.

 

***

 

By noon, Zayn’s actively counting down the hours until he’s discharged. He sits on his hospital bed, his stupid, pathetic legs out in front of him, and he can’t look at them anymore. He took the pill Harry wordlessly handed to him earlier, to help ease the ache, but it hasn’t kicked in yet. So he shuts his eyes to think, to try to ignore the pain, and to listen to the world around him. _Only twenty-four hours to go. Just one more night here, in this shitty bed, with these shitty sheets. I want my sheets. I want my apartment and my own socks and my shower. I want to jerk off again. Just me, listening to that one jazz album to calm down. I want to eat with a fucking spoon, by myself._

He feels keyed up, his arm out of the sling and in his lap, the cast on his wrist knocking against his skull over and over. It makes a dull sound, like a piece of wood hitting a plastered wall. Robert taught him how plaster sounds the best when picked up with a mic, in the small studio room just outside the audio booths. Plaster has a hollowness to it, and sounds amazing on screen when wood hits it just right. _I miss being a mixer. I miss paying bills. I want my leg back. I want to write my name again, even if it’s just a rent check._

Just as he begins to knock the cast against his forehead, probably making a red mark, the door creaks open.

“Can we please wait a bit?” he begs, wincing at the sound of his own pathetic voice. “Just give me a minute.”

“My kidney isn’t working right.”

Zayn’s eyes fly open and he cracks his neck, he whips it up so fast.

Bex walks towards him with a frown, her hair limp on her shoulders. Her cheeks aren’t rosy, she’s not in her little nightgown or slippers, and instead wears a thin, yellowing hospital gown. It’s not the Bex he knows.

“Brought yours back,” she shrugs, holding up their walkie-talkies.

“Oh, love,” Zayn can’t help but frown, his entire face falling. “Come here.”

At first she doesn’t want to. She’s like Zayn, in that admitting she’s hurting or needs someone feels a lot like admitting defeat. She eyes him, untrusting of the extended hand, of what it means: that she’s back in the hospital officially. A patient. Again.

In the end, Bex crawls up into Zayn’s bed and lays next to him. He turns on his walkie-talkie immediately, before he forgets, in case she needs him later. And then he grabs for the remote and gets the TV going, to drown out the silence. Bex, ever the little patient, is careful not to lay directly on his bad arm.

That’s how Harry and Bex’s mom find them an hour later, heads tucked together, with an old “Full House” rerun squawking in the back ground. Zayn pretends to be asleep, even as Bex’s mom lifts her up with a small sob caught in her throat.

_I should comfort you, and Bex, but I don’t know how._

 

***

 

Zayn stands for a solid two minutes before he falls.

He knows, because he watches the clock over Harry’s shoulder. Harry pulled him up and held Zayn against his chest for a few minutes first, for Zayn’s good leg to get the message that it was time to be up again.

Harry must be a ball of dueling forces too, because he in equal measure holds Zayn close, his hand on the back of Zayn’s head, lovingly, but cold like it’s his job. Like all he wants in the world is to back away, to let Zayn go, to leave him be. It’s Harry-the-potential-boyfriend and Nurse Harry at odds.

But eventually Harry backs away, the heat of his hand no longer lingering on Zayn’s neck.

“She’ll be okay,” Harry says quietly, as Zayn sways on the spot, alone and in the middle of the room. Standing. Unassisted.

Zayn nods, not too much, afraid of moving and throwing off his equilibrium.

“I shouldn’t even tell you, because I’m not supposed to talk about patients to other patients. But her mom said I could. She came in with a massive fever. They’re worried her body is rejecting the organ. But I think it’s just a small setback. It’ll work just fine,” Harry puts his hands on his hips.

_Are you convincing me or yourself?_

“That’s good,” Zayn slowly nods a second time, still frozen on the spot. His leg fucking aches, it hits him about the same time as the pain in his shoulder does, but he stays still. He tries to power through. He tries not to think about the anger he’s thrown at Harry, or the shove Harry threw back. Harry must try to ignore it too, as his face tightens over and over, like he’s reminding himself to forget what he did.

“You’re doing it, babe,” Harry says with a small, unsure smile, leaning against the far wall to watch, like a proud dad with a toddler. “You’re up.”

Zayn is up. He’s standing. His right leg finally remembered what to do, his quad and calf working seamlessly together, his knee locked, his heel grounded. His left leg, the one already itching in the cast, hangs there like useless dead weight, but the rest of him, the non-broken parts, must know to hold steady.

Zayn looks down at himself and shouldn’t be in disbelief, but he is. He’s done it. He’s officially on his way to walking, eventually.

_I should try._

Harry doesn’t catch him in time, as he starts to tilt his body to the left, just to see how it feels to apply slight pressure to his left foot. _Let’s see if I can lean, just a little, and maybe move my other leg. Maybe I won’t walk for a while, but maybe I can shuffle a bit._

Zayn isn’t good at following directions when he’s feeling especially stubborn, so he does what Dr. Foreman warned him against. He’s falling through the air a split second later, his entire body crumpling in on itself like a paper airplane that won’t fly. Harry tries to rush to him, but he’s on the floor, his hip cracking against the tiles, before he can think about it too hard.

It’s like after the accident, the immediate sensation of weightlessness, of flying through the air. If the windows opened and he could feel the wind, or was allowed outside, maybe he’d have that rush of sound. But it’s silent in that godforsaken hospital room, in a place where children like Bex cry out in pain, good kids and happy people, at the end, stitched together like they’re made of fabric instead of skin. _People die here, and live their lives here, and they all end up like me, pissed off and angry at their own fucking skeletons._

“Fuck!” Zayn explodes, slamming his wrist cast onto the floor, in anger. It sends another jolt of pain through him, his brain unable to decide what hurts the worst, so maybe it all does. It’s all equal.

Harry tries to lift him, the dead weight Zayn can’t care to alleviate. He curses, over and over, his hip now aching alongside the rest of him. It all bursts from him, the thoughts and words he can’t stop.

“This is fucking bullshit!”

“Zayn,” Harry tries, like a good nurse, to quiet him. He turns Zayn onto his back, to lift him up under his armpits.

It’s no longer just Zayn and Harry though, a two-man team up against the rest of the world. It’s not Zayn, the sad little patient, with a crush on his hot nurse, the two of them reading each others’ minds and sharing candy over Harry’s break. They’re enemies. Dueling forces. Zayn makes a scene, cursing and screaming at full volume, two nurses and an orderly bursting in at the same time to see what’s wrong. The orderly tries to help Harry, to grab Zayn’s other arm, to calm him down, but Zayn thrashes against the movement.

“Get the fuck off me,” Zayn hisses, shoving the stranger away.

“Zayn,” Harry whispers, finally getting him upright. They all stare at Zayn, the man at the end of his rope, only a day left. He’s lost it. He’s just lost.

“This is all your fucking fault,” Zayn thrashes against him, shoving off Harry’s chest, to fall onto his bed. His ass hits it and he’s reminded yet again how bony it is.

Trisha glides into the room like she owns it, holding up a hand, to ask everyone to leave. They start to, except for Harry, who stares at Zayn with wide eyes.

The orderly at the door, the one with biceps the size of Zayn’s entire head, actually grunts to get Harry’s attention. Like he just wants to get a move on, to head out for his lunch break. _Great, I can’t even do this right. Apparently I’m textbook, a guy so close to going home, he’s lost his fucking mind. Fine, you all can leave. I’ll be the crazy person here with my mother talking me down, just fine, thanks._

“It’s all your fucking fault,” Zayn hits his wrist against the bed, on a roll. “If you hadn’t of waved at me like a fucking jackass, this never would’ve happened. I would be fine. I would be climbing to the top of Philips Arena, just because I fucking can, if it wasn’t for you.”

Zayn closes his eyes as his mom grips his shoulder. He needs to try and breathe through the pain. He can do it, he thinks. Just as quickly as the anger exploded out of him, it’s gone and disappeared into the ether. It was one fall. Just one fall, one outburst. It’ll be okay now that he’s said the worst thing he can say. It’s just another hurdle to jump, another shitty piece of this experience that he’ll look back on and laugh about. This is Zayn’s one punch, the one swing he’ll allow himself. _I’m okay. I’m here. Harry’s got me. He’ll pull me back. Gen said so, nurses never take it personally. I got angry, and Harry doesn’t even have to know the feeling of tasting blood in his mouth. No punches. It’s okay. I’ll say sorry once I can breathe again._

Zayn inhales and exhales. He lets it go. The pain can’t touch him, not now. He won’t let it.

“I’m really sorry you’re hurting, Zayn.”

Zayn opens his eyes slowly, to look at Harry. His body language. His blank face.

That’s the last thing Harry says to Zayn while looking him in the eye, there in that hospital room. Nurse Harry grips his stethoscope between his shaking fingers and gives a polite nod. He shakes Trisha’s hand, as she looks at him like he’s a stranger and not the sweet boy she’s gotten to know over the last few weeks.

Zayn’s heart rate hasn’t slowed down and the adrenaline thrums through him. He can almost hear it, a whirring sound a lot like an old cassette tape being rewound. Even with the dull ache radiating through his entire body, like one big bruise or paper cut, he can’t focus on anything but Harry. Because Zayn doesn’t quite know how to handle this version of Harry. He’s never been this closed off or professional before, even on the days he tried especially hard to treat Zayn like any old patient.

“Tomorrow you’ll have your discharge instructions from Dr. Foreman, and information about your physical therapy,” Harry says robotically towards the wall, like he’s reading it off a cue card.

“Harry,” Zayn tries, coming down.

“Make sure to tell security downstairs that you’re leaving, so they can take your visitor’s badge,” Harry nods to Trisha.

“Harry,” Zayn almost screams at him, so they can lock eyes and read each other’s minds like before. Zayn needs Harry to be on his team, on his side, even when he acts like a brat, and especially when it hurts this badly.

_Harry, come on. This is just what we do, right? I get angry and lash out, and you tell me to get a grip and make me try again. Make me. Look at me. Don’t leave yet. I’m sorry._

Harry stares at the wall.

“I won’t be here tomorrow, as it’s my day off. I hope you enjoy your time at home, and have a speedy recovery.”

Harry nods at the wall and then walks right out of Zayn’s hospital room without a backwards glance.

 

***

 

Zayn would’ve bet his life savings that Harry would show up to see him off. Granted, Zayn doesn’t have much to his name, and he definitely will take a hit after not getting any overtime while in the hospital. But if he had to bet on something certain, something infallible, it would’ve been Harry there to hug him goodbye.

It’s not Harry that helps him out of bed first thing to take a piss, but a large orderly from the psych wing. Zayn tries not to dwell on that, worried that after his outburst, he was put on some “list” of uncontrollable and volatile patients. But then that leads him into paranoia-like territory, which feels worse somehow, to give in to. So he tries to shut all thoughts out.

The next time the door opens, Zayn expects it to be Harry, so he’s already smiling when Gen shuffles in.

Gen has the day off just as Harry does, but she still wanted to see him off. It’s early, before Dr. Foreman is set to arrive, so they have time. She tells him she always has to see her patients go, if they’ve been with her for a while. Zayn’s officially an _awhile_ for her, some long-term care kid she’ll tell other kids about someday, like the girl who punched her. _I hope she has something nice to say about me. Or that I at least could’ve been worse, in the end._

Bex comes in behind her, the walkie-talkie in her hand, and frowns at him. She sits on his lap though, careful of his cast, and tugs on the hair growing from his chin.

“I wish I could go, too,” she sighs, her eyes sad. She bites her lip like she wants to say something else. Zayn never thought the one person to fully understand what this sort of experience feels like to be a seven-year-old girl, _but here we are, partners in crime now._ She trusts him to make her feel better, so he plays with a pigtail, twirling it around a finger.

“You will, my love. Soon.”

Gen pretends to suddenly be interested in his final chart, flipping through it with withered fingers, no longer facing them.

“What if my kidney doesn’t get better?” Bex admits into his ear, her little fingers holding onto his neck, the two patients in the room who don’t want to share.

“It already is,” Zayn whispers back. “It’s just the rest of you trying to catch up, see? Your fever will go away, the medicine will work, and you’ll be home in no time.”

“I hope so.”

“I know so.”

“Or maybe they’ll give me a robot kidney, like they gave you a robot leg?” she sits back to stare at him, her eyes wide, asking his permission.

“They just might do that,” Zayn pulls her close for a final hug.

Gen kisses his cheek and pretends not to get emotional, even as Zayn thanks her over and over, and grips her in a crushing hug. She promises to get his number out of the system, so they can keep in touch, and Zayn knows for certain he’ll be another one of her old patients that call her on her birthday. Maybe he’ll be the one to visit her instead. Bex grips Gen’s hand and waves goodbye, both walkie-talkies going along with her.

The next time the door opens, Zayn is positive it’s Harry. He smiles wide again, to be ready for him, to throw his emotions Harry’s way before he can be his nurse.

But it’s Dr. Foreman, Susan, and his mom. They all smile at him and say how great he’s done. Dr. Foreman watches when Smith comes in to help him stand, and they all cheer as he stands on his own. He can do it now. Harry was right, it gets easier, and stops hurting so bad. It still aches and Zayn has to grit his teeth, ready for another pill, but he does it. He can power through at least.

Susan gets him ready for the crutches, has him show her he can lean on them correctly, even though he’s advised not to use them for a few months. He can’t have any pressure on his left leg, so it’s the wheelchair if he absolutely has to get around. Trisha bites her thumbnail and listens to the instructions, hell-bent on taking care of her kid like she always tried to when Zayn was little, kicking and screaming to do it on his own.

The third time the door opens, it’s someone bringing him food.

The fourth time the door opens, it’s a man with a question about paperwork and insurance. Trisha helps Zayn sign something, his right arm still sore, but his Z isn’t wobbly. And it’s definitely not a Th, which still makes Zayn proud.

The fifth time the door opens, it’s Smith and another nurse, to officially let him go. They help him pack up his things, they chit chat with his mom, they get him into his wheelchair. Zayn takes his time sitting down, pretends to adjust the wheels a bit, says he has to pee before the drive home. But it’s no use, because eventually, after all of it, Harry still hasn’t arrived. Harry isn’t coming. _You always do what you say you’re gonna do. You always explain things in a way I can understand. You made me want to be better. And I told you my accident was all your fault._

Trisha sees his face fall as he wheels back and forth in place, his left leg stuck out in front of him pathetically. _It’s time to go, isn’t it._

“Did you know he wasn’t even working on this floor?” Trisha smiles sadly.

“What?”

“He worked the cardio recovery floor, not this one. He had been helping people after open-heart surgeries and heart attacks for months, until you came into the emergency room, and suddenly he asked to be transferred here.”

Zayn stares at his mother with wide eyes.

“He’s known Gen for years,” Zayn scoffs, sure of it, even though he’s never asked. They hug every day. Twice. Gen loves Harry. They have a kinship, a true partnership, years and years of it.

“I think that’s just Harry,” she shrugs. “Sort of makes everyone feel like an old friend, doesn’t he?”

Zayn doesn’t know what to do with that.

She grips his jacket between her palms, her nail polishing chipping. She’s been too busy and stressed to take care of herself, to treat herself to a manicure, and it makes Zayn’s stomach twist. _You love your manicures._

“You ready, sunshine?”

“Yeah,” he nods, overwhelmed. “Let’s go.

All the nurses on the floor, a few doctors Zayn recognizes, the CNAs and orderlies, the ones he always thought he was unfriendly to, they all see him off with big smiles. Back out into the world, not quite brand new, but maybe with a new paint job. Bex ties a balloon to his wheelchair, some ghastly cartoon character from the hospital gift shop that she must like. He kisses her cheek with a big, sloppy noise to make her laugh, even as his stomach drops at the thought of leaving her there. Smith shakes his hand properly and wishes him well. They hug him before he’s wheeled onto the elevator.

Zayn listens. He hears their goodbyes and well wishes ringing in his ears inside that silent elevator. The ding it makes at every floor. Trisha’s sniffling. The creaking of the metal contraption underneath him. He hears it all.

And then a few minutes later, Zayn’s mother very purposefully pushes him out the front door of Grady Memorial. The wind blows, the sound so familiar it’s like a soundtrack. The sun hits his skin and he can’t help but widen his arms, his clavicle cursing at him, his eyes closed to ignore it. _If I tell myself it doesn’t hurt, it won’t._

“It’s a gorgeous day, isn’t it?” Trisha says with another sniffle.

“Best one I’ve seen,” Zayn smiles, tilting his chin up. _It’s like I can touch the sky._

 

***

 

It’s a chorus that night, every creak and swish of a jacket in Zayn’s apartment, every voice ringing out with laughter, bottles clinking, toasts, Sharpies on his cast. Jeremy tried to draw something on his wrist, but Trisha Malik whistled to the small get-together and said under no circumstances is Zayn to have anything crude or rude written on his wrist. “He still has to be a functioning member of society, you heathens.”

So Jeremy drew a pretty sick treble near his ankle and called it a day.

His mom had to help him into the bathroom each and every time, for him to take a piss or wash his hands. But she leaves him be, now that can stand on his own for short bursts of time. Robert lifts him from his wheelchair to give everyone hugs at the end of his Welcome Home party, and says he can come back to work the next day, or in a month, if it’s what he needs.

Zayn very quickly says he’ll be back in a week, antsy to be in his booth, wondering if his soundboard has started to collect dust. _Those fuckers better have cleaned it._

At the end of it all, as Trisha maneuvers around him to clean up his little apartment, Zayn rubs his cast against his beard and listens to the rough sound of it. The wind blows through the open sliding glass door to his balcony, the door he’s not sure he’ll be closing anytime soon, now that he’s in a place where he can open any window he wants to.

He’s home, he’s on his way back, he’ll be running in no time. It could take a year to feel fully healed and back to normal, but for now, even in a wheelchair, he’s no longer the bratty son of a bitch feeling sorry for himself a few doors down from a little girl with a bad kidney. He’s Zayn again, the kid who walked in front of car at the mere sight of Harry Styles.

_I wish you could’ve been here. I wish I hadn’t of ruined it._

_We were supposed to have our date._

_It was never your fault. I’m really sorry. I should’ve said so._

 

***

 

_FOUR MONTHS LATER_

 

***

 

“Well, it certainly smells the same,” Trisha wrinkles her nose, hitting the button to Zayn’s old recovery floor. He can’t help but laugh at her, recognizing the expression he often uses for unpleasant smells. _Us Maliks really don’t like the unpleasant, do we. And we can never hide it either._

Zayn hasn’t been back to this part of the hospital since his discharge day months ago, only ever going to the small building set further back from the main road, where he’s met with Dr. Foreman for regular check-ins. It’s also where he’ll start meeting Susan when the cast comes off, to rehab his leg. He doesn’t get too down about it anymore, being the guy with the fucked up leg who still has trouble getting around without his mother’s help. And even though he knows it’ll hurt like a bitch, he’s looking forward to it. He’s better at pushing through the pain now. _Gee, I wonder why._

The doors ding and finally open, Zayn stepping out first with his crutches, strong with them now. He’s had the cast off his wrist for a few weeks and he doesn’t even need Trisha behind him like she used to immediately after the hospital, with a hand out in case his right leg decided to shake.

He can walk with a purpose now, can lift his heavy leg cast and everything, and a day hasn’t gone by where he doesn’t appreciate it. _I love being able to walk. I love standing tall. I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of saying so._

One of his old nurses spots him first, Sheera Something, one of the younger girls who sometimes came in with Harry to give him his medicine. And pretty soon, the whole floor comes out to see him, Zayn Malik walking in like he owns the place, his black t-shirt taut against his chest, his basketball shorts wide enough for his cast, his eyes brighter than they ever got to see.

He greets them heartily and tries to be polite, but he’s not here for them. The backpack he wears every day now, so he can carry his own belongings so his mom doesn’t have to, isn’t exactly heavy. But the sound of the crinkling plastic inside has been grating ever since he picked the flowers up, so really, he wants the damn thing off his shoulders.

Zayn’s eyes scan the floor, as they crowd around him to ask questions and hug his mom.

Finally, she comes shuffling out of 1143 in her pink scrubs, rubbing her hands together, most likely dowsing herself in hand sanitizer. Her hair is longer, her face a little fuller, the lines around her mouth just as grooved and set in as Zayn remembers.

“There she is,” Zayn crutches his way through the group. “The most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.”

Genevieve snaps her neck to look up at him, caught off guard. And then she bursts into tears.

“Hey Gen,” Zayn whispers, as she pulls him into a bone-crushing hug. “Missed me?”

He can’t make out anything she says. It’s mostly just blubbering against his shoulder, her fingernails digging into his skin. She leans back to look him up and down, this man before her eyes, and no longer the helpless sack of shit he was when on this floor. He’s gained some weight back, shaved his head, and is officially standing up. No shaking, no angry outbursts tucked behind his teeth, able to take a piss on his own.

“Oh love,” she cries again, hugging Zayn against her chest. “I’m so happy to see you.”

Trisha, the lovely woman that she is, gently reaches into the backpack and pulls out the bouquet of flowers wrapped in plastic. He prefers for her to hand things to him first, instead of doing it for him. So she gently nudges it into his hand holding his right crutch, and backs away with a wink.

Genevieve wipes her eyes, her mascara smudging slightly, as Zayn hands over the sunflowers.

He smiles and it’s so genuine, it almost takes up all the oxygen in the hallway.

“Happy birthday, G.”

 

***

 

Zayn doesn’t do well with small spaces, apparently. Or well, that’s not exactly true, because his audio booth is about the size of a small closet. Even the studio spaces he used to work in with Robert, to create random sound effects were pretty small. His own apartment is small.

No, what Zayn realized more than anything else, while cooped up in that tiny hospital room is that he truly doesn’t do well with being taken care of in small spaces. Trisha literally smacked him upside the head when he explained it to her, as she lamented yet again that as a kid, he genuinely used to pretend he wasn’t sick so she wouldn’t worry over him or miss work.

“You puked in your shoe once! In your own closet to hide it!” Trisha laughed until she cried, over the Kung Pao chicken Zayn made them from scratch. “I found it the next morning when you swore up and down that you didn’t have the flu!”

Zayn doesn’t remember that particular incident, but it sounds like something he’d do.

It was like once Zayn was home, back in his own environment, washing his own hair, making his own food, he could recognize the person he became in that hospital. A person isn’t meant to be taken care of to that extent, and not for long periods of time. Humans have free will and agency for a reason. A grown up should feel like a grown up. The bright spot of any given day shouldn’t be, _wow I could hold my own fork for dinner, good for me._

But on the other hand, Zayn knows he wouldn’t have made it at all, had he not gotten help. If he didn’t have Harry or Gen, or the countless other people employed by Grady Memorial, he wouldn’t have lasted. You can’t do everything on your own, not when your body is trying to heal itself. Sometimes you need someone to remind you to eat your peas, to ask your full name, to feel your toes.

Harry helped. He helped over and over, took care of Zayn, made sure Zayn knew he could rely on him. He might’ve waved to Zayn that day near the diner, but he also held Zayn’s hand. He wore a halo, called his mom, kept him calm. _You’re here. I got you._

Sometimes Zayn finds himself dreaming of those words, of Harry’s voice. Aside from the wave, Zayn heard Harry before he ever saw him. It was Harry’s voice that kept him alive, kept him calm, tethered him to the earth when that Honda sent him flying.

Harry was the best nurse Zayn could ask for. He was gentle, complacent, sweet. That is, until he had to be firm, engaging, harsh. Zayn didn’t need a millions Gens helping him drink water and pass the time by talking about soap operas. He needed a Harry, to make him stand up when all he wanted to do was sit down.

But Zayn took for granted, or forgot to remember, that Harry’s a person. He’s not an angel with a halo, or some phantom hero who saved the day. He’s a nurse, a good one, but that’s what he _does_ , not who he _is_. They got to know each other backwards, as nurse and patient, instead of Harry and Zayn. They talked about their first date over and over, before ever actually having one.

It took him a few months to recover from the mental anguish of that hospital bed, the way it made him feel, the anger that oozed from his pores like silly putty. He screamed at Harry, blamed him, lashed out because he was afraid. He was hurting and only saw himself as a failure.

Zayn’s not a failure anymore. Or at least he doesn’t feel like one. He gets up every morning and swings his own legs over the side of his bed, to feel the rug between his toes. He can lean on his right leg, stronger than it’s ever been, and can brush his teeth now that his clavicle is practically healed. He can wheel himself to the curb for his mom to pick him up and take him to work, he cooks, he cleans, he calls Bex and her family to wish them well. He doesn’t feel sorry for himself or dwell on the pain when his leg aches. He doesn’t pop more pills than necessary. He did as Harry said, and proved it. He did it one day at a time, proved that he could take care of himself after weeks of not being able to. Harry told him he was healing, said it takes time, and it did. _You always told me what I needed to hear. You said I had to crawl first._

Zayn is no longer healing.

In a few weeks, when the cast comes off, he’s officially healed.

Zayn doesn’t say all this out loud, though. Zayn Malik, ever the inner-monologuer, keeps most of it to himself, except the parts he needs Genevieve to understand as they sit in the little kitchenette on his old recovery floor. Along with the flowers, he brought her a cupcake from the bakery near the studio. Pink frosting, her favorite color.

Genevieve holds his hand as he explains it, how he wants to get to know Harry outside of the hospital, maybe in the diner they were supposed to meet in, had the Honda not gotten in the way.

She smiles at him and grabs the little pad of paper out of her breast pocket, along with her pen, clicking it a solid six times before she stops herself. But it’s like she knew all of this all along, honestly. If Zayn weren’t so dense in the first place, he would’ve realized that the whole fucking world knew.

Zayn rubs at his neck, his cheeks flaming. _Everyone knew, didn’t they._

“You two weren’t exactly subtle, now were you?” she reads his mind.

 

***

 

Harry sees Zayn before he can see Harry.

Zayn crutches his way down the street that day. He has to look down to see where he’s going. He slipped once, when crossing Baker Street a week back, the plastic end of his right crutch too slick on the concrete. Some stranger caught him, a man coming from the gym with a water bottle tossed to the side as he reached for Zayn. They laughed it off afterwards, even though Zayn felt the embarrassment creep in. _Eh, not the first time, and certainly won't be the last._ The guy was cool about it.

So Zayn keeps his eyes on the sidewalk, his right Nike with the good tractioned plastic first, then the crutches. It’s a slow process and his armpits are fucked from the extensive pressure, but he likes it more than the wheelchair. It’s not easy to be that far down and beneath people. He hated people having to literally talk down to him. He’ll crutch all fucking day if he has to. And he does.

But as he gets closer to his destination, he knows Harry saw him first. He looks up and there he is, Harry Styles near the diner, staring at him with wide eyes. He must’ve watched Zayn hobble his way towards him for the whole block.

Zayn smiles big and bright, practically making a sound with it. _You saw me coming. You could’ve run to me, to help me walk, to assist, to check. And you didn’t._

“Hey,” Zayn says first thing, the last few feet between them getting smaller and smaller.

“Hi,” Harry says in disbelief.

“I figured this would be appropriate,” Zayn gestures to the diner to their left, the old silver boxcar like out of some movie he saw once, directly across from where Zayn got hit by a car. It’s well after the lunch rush on Harry’s day off, and it’s exactly as Zayn hoped: a surprise.

“Gen didn’t say…” Harry gestures to Zayn. “I thought she… I was gonna meet her for lunch, she said she needed a friend.”

“Yeah,” Zayn bites his lip, smiling.

“You little shits,” Harry finally laughs, stepping towards the door to hold it open for Zayn to crutch through.

They settle in a corner booth, the red vinyl upholstery squeaking as Zayn shifts. Once he’s slipped into any sort of close off seating, it takes Zayn a few minutes to get comfortable. He doesn’t mind propping his leg up on the seat opposite him, but it’s not really sanitary to have a bare foot up like that. He’s just about to remove it, when he feels Harry’s hands around his casted ankle. He reads Zayn’s mind and winks. _Fine, I’ll leave it there, just pretend it’s not gross._

Harry thrums his fingers on his menu, as an old Smash Mouth song plays from the shitty overhead sound system. Zayn takes it all in, the coffee machine, the boy drawing with crayons a table over, the way the blinds on the far wall knock into each other as the wind blows them. _Great nat sound. Super rich and hollow. We could record some solid shit in here._

“You look good,” Harry pulls him out of it. “Really good.”

“So do you.”

“I would’ve like… worn my good jeans, if I knew you were coming.”

“I like those jeans.”

Harry bites his lip and smiles. They order coffee and club sandwiches from Ray, a guy Harry must know, since they shake hands like old friends. Harry asks him how his son is doing, and he admits with a wavering voice that he’s a lot better now. _You make everyone feel like family, don’t you._

Zayn can’t help but watch Harry, for the first time away from Grady Memorial. Even from that first second, when Zayn had Harry’s voice in his ear, Harry was in nurse mode. He saw the situation happen in real time, the boy across the street he waved at, flying through the air. So he got to Zayn fast as anything, to help, to assess. It all might’ve been different, had Zayn looked both ways before crossing the street. If he had just looked away from Harry, from the possibility of having an omelet in that diner with the hot stranger, this conversation probably would’ve happened then, all those months ago. _Here in this booth. You and me._

Over the last four months, Zayn’s thought about this diner a lot.

“What were you reading?” Zayn tilts his head in wonderment.

“What?”

“That day. I looked over and saw you. You looked – you were gorgeous,” Zayn pinches his lip. “You had just read something on your phone and laughed so hard, you were bursting with it. It must’ve been funny.”

Harry’s chin shakes, just a little, before his mouth curls into a smile.

“My roommate sent me a GIF.”

“Really?”

“I must’ve said something stupid, something to bother him. He sent back a GIF of that guy from ‘The Office’ making a face, and it was really funny,” Harry shrugs with a laugh.

“Sounds kind of lame,” Zayn reaches for his hand, intertwining their fingers.

Harry laughs so hard, he snorts. But then he can’t help himself, because he stares down at their hands together, the way their skin tones look almost poetic side by side. Zayn remembers the last time they did this, when Harry was his nurse and it wasn’t allowed. _We did it anyways, though. We did a lot of shit we weren’t supposed to do._

“I’m really sorry,” Zayn finally whispers.

Harry looks him in the eye. Silent.

“You were… the most amazing nurse. You did everything right. Every single time I needed you, you were there. I never should’ve said the accident was your fault. I was just angry and it felt like… it felt like I was dying in there, you know?”

“I know.”

“But it wasn’t your fault. And even though I never said it then, I’m saying it now: thank you. For everything. For pushing me when I needed it.”

Harry grimaces at that, and pulls his hand away. He shoves his fingers between his thighs and curls inward, like he’d like nothing more than to fall through a hole in the floor. Even when Ray sets down their food, he doesn’t look up or make conversation like he normally would.

“I pushed you.”

“I know, babe,” Zayn uses their own nickname. “I’m saying thank you.”

“No, I _pushed_ you. I – I got angry and actually shoved at you. A patient. You were my patient, my fucking boy– or like, a guy I could eventually see myself with, and I pushed you,” Harry finally looks up to Zayn’s face, upset.

“Harry.”

“No, I… I should’ve gotten fired for that, for putting my hands on you. Hell, I should’ve been fired for kissing you and letting you hold my hand. Even letting you pee that first day, was not something I should’ve allowed.”

Zayn can’t help it. He reaches for Harry’s hand again and holds tight.

“I might’ve been someone you enjoyed spending time with, someone you… liked or whatever. But I was a _terrible_ nurse.”

“That’s not true.”

“It’s why I couldn’t be there that last day,” Harry shakes his head. “Not only did I push you, but it really did feel like my fault, that you were in the hospital in the first place _and_ that you hit a breaking point. And just… I let you fall.”

“I was a fucking idiot,” Zayn’s voice slices through the air to silence him. “I thought I could do it, thought I could try, and because I’m a stubborn jackass, I fell. That was me. I did that.”

“I should’ve prepared you more,” Harry shakes his head, but grips Zayn’s hand in return. “I… I cared about you more than I should have cared about a patient. I should’ve known what you needed. You relied on me and I let my temper get the best of me. Again.”

Zayn thinks about Genevieve then, and the girl who punched her. Sometimes when it comes to pain, people go crazy. They let it take over, envelope them, engulf their thoughts and reason. _I fell to the floor and bruised my hip, and what did I do? I slammed my wrist into the tile, on purpose. That’s what it does. It makes you forget how to function properly._

“It makes you lose it,” Zayn shakes his head, remembering the things he said while strapped to a hospital bed.

“I know,” Harry replies with wide eyes.

Harry takes his hand back, and Zayn thinks he’s going to curl inward again, his fingers tucked away. But instead, and very purposefully, Harry reaches for the buttons along his chest. _You’re already cutting it close with those few buttons, babe. You sure you wanna undo any more of them?_

Harry smiles at him, reading his mind. But he doesn’t stop, and in a few seconds flat, Zayn can see the massive scar between his pecs. _How have I never noticed this before?_

“I don’t exactly broadcast it,” Harry runs a finger over the pink, raised scar tissue.

Zayn shakes his head in disbelief.

“A Ventricular Septal Defect,” Harry says, while redoing the buttons of his shirt. Maybe he knows Zayn won’t want to look at it any longer than he has to. “I was born with a hole in my heart. A pretty big one, actually.”

“Jesus.”

“I had the first surgery when I was two, and then another when I was six. They had to put a pulmonary artery band in, to reduce blood flow to my lungs, which then had to be removed when I was nine. I spent a lot of time in the hospital. It felt like years.”

Zayn’s head spins as he tries to keep up, envisioning Harry as tiny as Bex, with a miniature IV stand following him around like a dog on a leash. Zayn, someone so exhausted and disgusted by the hospital, has vowed to never set foot in one again, if he can help it. But Harry, a boy with a faulty heart and numerous surgeries, decided to become a nurse. To help people after heart attacks and surgeries. To push people, like Zayn, because he had to be pushed once, too.

“It hurt like a mother fucker,” Harry ends up smiling. “Hurt all over, all the time. I couldn’t breathe half the time. My lungs wouldn’t work right, since my heart couldn’t get them the oxygen they needed.”

“You really do know,” Zayn brings Harry’s hand up to kiss his fingers. “You always said you knew how it felt, and you really do, don’t you.”

“It’s why I said my temper gets the best of me, when a patient gets angry from the pain. It’s like… when I’m trying to help someone, or push them, it’s because I know without it, they’ll never do it. I had a nurse do the same for me, when I couldn’t breathe. She pushed me and now… now I run marathons.”

Zayn’s heart clenches at mini Harry, the size of Bex, bent over at the waist, wheezing for air. Praying for oxygen, entire body clenching, crying for his mother. _You know. And you made me want to try. We lost so much time between then and now, but I'm glad we're doing it like this. Now._

“You’re the only reason I’m up right now,” Zayn admits.

“That’s not true.”

“It’s absolutely true. And not just because you got in my face and screamed at me to try again and again,” Zayn smiles. “But mostly because I knew I wanted to be able to walk for our first date. That was all you, babe.”

Harry tilts his head and scrunches his nose, the action so fucking sweet, Zayn almost leans over to bite at it.

“I loved watching you walk to me,” Harry kisses Zayn’s hand then. “Gorgeous and smoldering, big eyes and cheekbones for days. It’s why I waved to you in the first place. To see you saunter over and knock me off my feet.”

Eventually Zayn leans back in the booth, to finally pick at the sandwich Ray left ages ago. _I should’ve gotten it on sourdough. Oh well. Next time._

“Oh so you thought this was our date?” Zayn grabs for the ketchup, shaking it harshly. It makes a disgusting sound as he squeezes it out, so comedic and ridiculous, Zayn’s pretty sure he should bring the bottle back to the studio in case Robert needs animated sound effects for that Nickelodeon show they got hired for. _We could make this a fart. Or a squelch for vomit._

“Well, yeah.”

“Babe,” Zayn rolls his eyes. “This is just lunch. This isn’t our first date. Hardly.”

Harry smiles so wide, it takes up all the oxygen in the room. Zayn winks at him, before gesturing towards Harry’s own sandwich and fries with a discerning eye.

“Eat your food.”

Harry salutes him with a _yes sir_ and does just that.

 

***

 

Two days later, their first date involves a blanket in the park. It’s not as nice as Zayn would’ve liked, the fact that Harry wears a gorgeous sweater and jeans, and he can only wear his signature t-shirt and athletic shorts. _I look good in jeans, you’ll see. I may not have an ass, but I look good from the front. I’ll show you._

Harry the mind reader makes them a picnic, complete with plastic wine glasses and a bottle of merlot his mom gave him. Zayn learns about Harry’s mom, as they sprawl on the red-checkered blanket and watch the clouds shift.

Zayn soaks it all in, the small details about Harry’s life that he never got to see, when every interaction between them has always solely been focused on Zayn or his needs. It’s nice, to hear about Harry finally, the little things and the big things that piece together just so. _You’re not perfect, you’re not an angel with a halo. You’re terribly unfunny and a film snob. You’re a guy with shitty tattoos and a chipped front tooth. I want to lick it._

Harry doesn’t get too deep, as he grips Zayn’s right hand and intertwines their fingers, now that they can. But he lights up when he talks further about his family and his roommate, some guy he went through nursing school with.

“We were the only men in our class,” Harry sighs, “which was a shame. I think if more men did this job, we’d all be better off. It teaches me new and interesting ways to have empathy every single day, I swear.”

“That the only reason?” Zayn winks at him.

“I mean, it would’ve been nice to have more men around in general, I guess,” Harry shoves at him.

“So you could blow a dude in the supply closet, ‘Grey’s Anatomy’ style,” Zayn wiggles his eyebrows and kisses Harry’s cheek.

Harry smacks his chest, before he curls up into Zayn’s side and tucks his face in his neck, his breath hot and insistent against Zayn’s skin. Zayn feels Harry curl a foot around his good ankle, and something stirs inside him right there on that blanket in plain view of a park full of people.

“Wanna blow _you,_ actually,” Harry huffs into his ear, his tongue wet.

“I knew you had a dirty mouth,” Zayn laughs, pulling him up so they can kiss properly.

They make sure to keep it PG there in the park, because Harry’s a gentleman and won’t let Zayn shove his hand down his jeans. They make sure their first date is a pleasant one, with Harry giving Zayn a ride home and everything. He helps Zayn from the car, but only a little so Zayn can get his footing after the wine and the rush of blood to his dick taking oxygen from his brain.

They make out on Zayn’s doorstep, with Harry running his warm hands over Zayn’s shaved head. _I’m not a goddamn Chia pet, but go ahead, you feel anything you want, babe._

Harry tries to do the right thing and step away, to say goodnight, but Zayn shakes his head without disconnecting their mouths. He shakes away the thoughts from the hospital, when Harry only saw him as a patient, a body to tend to, a collection of bone and muscle with Latin names he had to memorize in school using a pink highlighter. He swats away the iodine and the catheter and the IV drip that drove him crazy, the words he hurled around like dodge balls, the times he couldn’t look at Harry from embarrassment.

It’ll take some more time to fully think of the accident and his stay in the hospital as blended into one big “event.” It still stays with him, most mornings when he wakes up and remembers what it felt like to not want to. Harry is still his nurse and he’s still just some dumb patient Harry fell for.

But right then, as Zayn presses against Harry harder, he shoves it all away. _We’re Harry and Zayn, the boys who waved outside a diner and stepped towards each other. That was us then, and this is us now. This was our first date and we’re going to make the most of it._ So Zayn presses a hand to Harry’s chest, over his scar, and leans back to throw him a smile.

“If you don’t fuck me within the next five minutes, I just might burst into flames.”

Harry nods and scrambles to grab the keys from Zayn’s hand.

 

***

 

“I Googled it, I swear.”

“Zayn.”

“I’m serious! I read all about it online. We’re good.”

_“Zayn.”_

Zayn looks up at Harry above him, his face and wild hair blocking the light out of his eyes. It’s not a halo this time, but it’s still nice to look at. _I’d put some instrumental beat beneath this, to really highlight Harry’s shaking arms from holding himself up. The audience would eat it up._

It wasn’t as hurried or rushed as they fell into Zayn’s bed, what with his massive cast getting in the way. They had to slowly get his shorts and boxers off, up and over the hard plaster, Harry’s eyes traveling across Zayn’s honey skin like he’s never seen it before. _Thanks for pretending like you’ve never seen it before_. Zayn had to kiss him good for that one.

Zayn had to stay on his back, sadly. So he didn’t get to do his signature move, which is being on top, biting across a chest, down down down, slowly sinking further until he could suck dick with wild abandon. Zayn knows he’s good at it, and doesn’t find any shame in admitting it.

Maybe Harry has the same move, because that’s exactly what he did to Zayn. He bit at his nipples, careful to avoid the scars along his sternum, and the one where they cut into his chest to fix the bleeding, right down to Zayn’s thick cock, spreading his lips over it like he’s been wanting to since the day he waved that one lone finger.

He split Zayn open with two slick fingers, curled and with intent, this one continuous motion that had Zayn riding them for a solid ten minutes. He whispered into Harry’s hair that he hasn’t had it in awhile, anyone inside him, no one to give him what he needed, no one to take care of him. Harry groaned at that, and sped up his hand. Zayn could feel him leaking all over his hipbone _. Oh Harry, you’re so predictable,_ Zayn couldn’t help but laugh to himself.

But now, with Harry above him, holding himself right at Zayn’s entrance with a look of worry on his face, Zayn has to reach for his jaw. Harry thinks it’ll hurt him, to fuck around with his leg still in a cast. But Zayn really did read up, how to have sex with an incapacitated limb, and this is the position everyone suggested. He even bought the same lube some guy said tasted like a grape lollipop. They spread Zayn’s legs as best they could and shoved a few pillows underneath it to level it out, so really, it’s time to get a move on.

“It won’t hurt. I’m good,” Zayn tries again, face serious, his cock fucking aching for it.

“But the movement isn’t recommended, it could jostle your hip, and I might knock into your tibia with my knees. I have very bony knees, Zayn. It’s not—”

“Harry, I swear to God.”

They stare at each other, somehow caught up in their Nurse Harry/Patient Zayn dynamic from before. And they both, at the very same time, remember to forget it entirely. Harry sinks into Zayn with newfound moxie, as Zayn’s toes curl. _Fuck, I love my toes. Good toes._

Harry fucks him good and hard, a tight fist around Zayn’s cock to tether him to the earth, and the sounds they make should be illegal. It’s wet and hurried, Harry’s breath punching out of his lungs to the point Zayn gets nervous, a slap of skin, Zayn’s embarrassing moans he can’t keep tucked behind his teeth. It’s almost like a soundtrack, something Zayn would mix together inside his head, like he used to when he couldn’t find a scrambled porn channel to watch while his mom was at work.

When Harry comes, Zayn commits the sound to memory. He swears, hand to God, that he’ll loop it in his head every time he ever needs to jerk off in the shower. And when he comes, messy and hot over Harry’s fingers, he makes it good, like the tease he is. He babbles into Harry’s ear so he can hear it too, how they sound. _Fuck, babe. So good. You’re so good. Fuck, you just made me come so hard. Gonna be sore for a week, yeah? Shit, babe. So glad you’re here._

 

***

 

You will never in a million years hear Zayn say something too cheesy, something along the lines of, “I’m glad I didn’t look both ways.” He will never say that, not to himself while thinking hard, or to Harry as they lie on their trampoline and stare into each others’ eyes. This isn’t a goddamn romantic comedy, okay?

Because fuck that shit. Zayn got hit by a _car_. _Of course_ he should've looked both ways, Harry Styles or not. Pain is pain is pain. It hurts. It fucking _hurts._  He wouldn't wish it on himself again, or on anyone else. We’re like caged animals when it comes to true agony, when struck down and beaten up by it, when in _real_ pain. The kind of pain people find hard to describe. The kind of pain that has no adjective, no silver lining, no poetic justice that makes it all _worth it_ in the end. Once the cast came off, the physical therapy hurt just as bad as the first day of trying to stand, and it fucking _hurt_. He could push through it now, but it still hurt to hell and back.

They say suffering and empathy go hand in hand, that without pain, we wouldn’t know joy.

And alright, _fine_. After physical therapy gets easier and Zayn can begin to walk on his own, sometimes he thinks _maybe_ it was all worth it, in the end. It’s when he looks over at Harry while they make dinner, or when Harry runs his first marathon with Zayn’s name emblazed across his chest, or when he’s mixing a romantic comedy and a man says something like, “It was you all along. You saved me.” Sometimes the thought crosses Zayn’s mind that yeah okay, pain sucks when you’re in it, but it’s not so bad once you’re not.

_It really did all blend into one big event, didn’t it. I don’t even think about any of the tiny pieces anymore._

The day Zayn is fully cleared of physical therapy is a special one. A few people gather in Susan’s occupational space, with the blue mats across the floor and the ballet bar Zayn’s had to grip for dear life more often than not. His mom openly cries, of course. He tried to tell her it’s not like he had a spinal injury or needed help getting motor function back. _One leg, ma. Just one stupid leg, relearning how to work right. I’m fine._ But she still cries, with Gen by her side and Bex holding her hand. Harry’s there too, watching with a look of pride, tucked in the corner so he’s not tempted to go out and help. It’s their deal now, that if it involves anything medical, Harry is Zayn’s boyfriend, not his nurse.

And just like that, as Zayn pulls Bex into a hug and thanks her dad for bringing her along, Harry fumbles for Zayn’s phone to take a picture.

He drops it.

Zayn’s iPhone glass shatters into a million pieces, the home button pops clean off and disappears, and the screen turns white. They all stare at it, the remnants of Zayn’s poor phone, strewn across the floor. Harry looks up at him with wide eyes, horrified at the mess he’s made from dropping it barely two feet off the ground.

Zayn laughs so hard, he has to bend over and grip his knees to breathe. They all laugh. Bex doesn’t even know why they’re laughing, but she laughs loudest of all.

_Two feet off the ground and the thing shatters. Hit by a car, and it was as pristine as the day I bought it._

_Life’s funny like that, isn’t it?_

**Author's Note:**

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